The Shining Cloth – Victoria Z. Rivers

The Shining Cloth – Victoria Z. Rivers

Dress and Adornment that Glitters

With 287 colour illustrations

Inside: Silk and Surfaces, Materials from the Earth, Gifts from Nature

“Embellishment with glittering substances is a worldwide and ancient practice. Traces of textiles and other artefacts decorated with gold were depicted in Assyrian bas-reliefs, frozen in the tombs of Scythian nomads, unearthed with the treasures of the Pharaohs and preserved in the burials of Andean cultures’ high priests and nobles. (…) Victoria Rivers has spent more than a decade in her quest for the most spectacular examples of this universally appealing phenomenon. Drawing on an extraordinary array of specialist and inaccessible anthropological research from every continent, she examines the lustrous qualities of silk and the special dyeing techniques and other treatments that give fabric surfaces shimmering qualities; explores the use of gold, silver, metals, sequins, beads and mirrors for decoration; and shows how other gifts of nature – shells, seeds, feathers and beetle wings – are cleverly manipulated to simulate more precious materials”.

Published by Thames & Hudson

192 pages

Conditions: great