Silken Threads Lacquer Thrones

The unique character of Lan Na culture, so different from that of coastal Southeast Asia, is reflected in the textiles and dress of its 19th century courts, and was developed through the integration of local cultures and societies living in the hills and valleys. In the court workshops, indigenous silk and cotton, Chinese silk, Burmese and Shan fabrics, with embroideries and sumptuous trimmings, were used to create ceremonial court dress, while goldsmiths and silversmiths, wood carvers and lacquer makers produced court regalia. In this lavishly illustrated book, textile expert Susan Conway traces the history of the Lanna princes, their complex marital and political alliances with the surrounding inland principalities and with Siam, China and Burma. A dramatic change in male court dress took place towards the end of the 19th century and acts as a metaphor for the political manoeuvres resulting from colonial intervention in the region. The book also shows how in such times, Lan Na princesses and their attendants continued to wear indigenous dress demonstrating loyalty to the culture they cherished.

The unique character of the 19th century Lan Na culture of Northern Thailand is seen in its sumptuous textiles and court dress reflecting a diverse cultural heritage. This work aims to situate this textile history within the context of the complex marital and political alliances of the time.

Volume I surveys the long history of fashion from the ancient world to c. 1800. The volume seeks to answer fundamental questions on the origins of fashion, challenging Eurocentric explanations that the emergence of fashion was a European phenomenon and shows instead that fashion found early expressions across the globe well before the age of European colonialism and imperialism. It sheds light on how fashion was experienced in a multitude of ways depending on class, gender, and race, and despite geographical distance, fashion connected populations across the globe. Fashions flowered and were reseeded, through entanglements of empire, forced and voluntary migration, evolving racial systems, burgeoning sea travel and transcontinental systems.

Muthanna, also known as mirror writing, is a compelling style of Islamic calligraphy composed of a source text and its mirror image placed symmetrically on a horizontal or vertical axis. This style elaborates on various scripts such as Kufic, naskh, and muhaqqaq through compositional arrangements, including doubling, superimposing, and stacking. Muthanna is found in diverse media, ranging from architecture, textiles, and tiles to paper, metalwork, and woodwork. Yet despite its centuries-old history and popularity in countries from Iran to Spain, scholarship on the form has remained limited and flawed. Muthanna / Mirror Writing in Islamic Calligraphy provides a comprehensive study of the text and its forms, beginning with an explanation of the visual principles and techniques used in its creation. Author Esra Akin-Kivanc explores muthanna's relationship to similar forms of writing in Judaic and Christian contexts, as well as the specifically Islamic contexts within which symmetrically mirrored compositions reached full fruition, were assigned new meanings, and transformed into more complex visual forms. Throughout, Akin-Kivanc imaginatively plays on the implicit relationship between subject and object in muthanna by examining the point of view of the artist, the viewer, and the work of art. In doing so, this study elaborates on the vital links between outward form and inner meaning in Islamic calligraphy.

The lives of weavers and their textile creations form the central subject in this monograph. It explores an understudied field of material culture studies in contemporary Myanmar. Textile cultures, craftsmanship and (national) identity are the core topoi of this work. Embedded in a century of shifting political and economic systems, the documented weaving cultures enhance our understanding of transformation processes on the local level. This book brings together current impulses of material culture studies and observations based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork data.

Illuminates many facets of these spectacular cloths.