For centuries India has exported textiles both east and west, but there are few locations in which textiles have survived so long. One exception is Egypt, and from Egyptian excavations we have fragmentary evidence for medieval trade in Indian textiles.
The Kelsey Museum possesses an unusually varied collection of these textile fragments, and the fragments in this collection are published here for the first time. This volume features a catalog and extensive illustrations of the more than fifty pieces examined; in addition, the author provides an introduction that places the fragments in their historical and archaeological context, a redefinition of the kinds of textiles that should be grouped in this category, a discussion of the geographical sites commonly connected with such fragments, and an appendix that offers the first detailed technical analysis of the dyes, fibers, and mordants that textiles such as these display.
This book will be of interest to historians of textiles, of India and Islam, and to art historians, as well as to those concerned with pre-European and European trade in the Indian Ocean.
The first full examination ot these dramatic cloths.
