The Textile Museum Journal, volume 45 (2018).

Titled Draping the Middle Ages and guest edited by Patricia Blessing, assistant professor of Medieval and Islamic Art History at Pomona College, The Textile Museum Journal 45 focuses on the mobile nature of textile patterns in the East and West during the Middle Ages and investigates the question of cultural specificity in the use of textile imitations in a range of media. As coveted objects of trade and diplomatic gift exchange, textiles were widely distributed using the cross-cultural networks between Byzantium, the Islamic world, and East Asia. Within this broader world of medieval textile exchange, the notion of textile patterns that are adapted in architecture, ceramics, metalwork, and manuscripts stand at the center of the four articles in this volume.

CONTENTS

Draping, Wrapping, Hanging: Transposing Textile Materiality in the Middle Ages
Patricia Blessing, Pomona College

Painted Silks: Form and Production of Women’s Court Dress in the Mongol Empire
Eiren L. Shea; Grinnell College

Gems in Cloth and Stone: Medium, Materiality, and the Late Antique Jeweled Aesthetic
Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, Dumbarton Oaks Museum

Put a Bird on it: What an Aviary Preoccupation Reveals about Medieval Silks
Meredyth Lynn Winter, Harvard University