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Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets

Contributors:

Dorothy Armstrong (Author)

Contributors: Dorothy Armstrong (Author)

Regular price $42.90 USD
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BISAC categories: History -> World -> General

BISAC categories: Art -> History -> General

BISAC categories: Crafts & Hobbies -> Rugs ->

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Product Description

Carpet specialist Dorothy Armstrong tells the stories surrounding twelve of the world's most fascinating carpets.

Dorothy Armstrong's Threads of Empire is a spellbinding look at the history of the world through the stories of twelve carpets. Beautiful, sensuous, and enigmatic, great carpets follow power. Emperors, shahs, sultans and samurai crave them as symbols of earthly domination. Shamans and priests desire them to evoke the spiritual realm. The world's 1% hunger after them as displays of extreme status. And yet these seductive objects are made by poor and illiterate weavers, using the most basic materials and crafts; hedgerow plants for dyes, fibers from domestic animals, and the millennia-old skills of interweaving warps, wefts and knots.

In Threads of Empire, Armstrong tells the histories of some of the world's most fascinating carpets, exploring how these textiles came into being then were transformed as they moved across geography and time in the slipstream of the great. She shows why the world's powerful were drawn to them, but also asks what was happening in the weavers' lives, and how they were affected by events in the world outside their tent, village or workshop. In its wide-ranging examination of these dazzling objects, from the 5th century BCE contents of the tombs of Scythian chieftains, to the carpets under the boots of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the 1945 Yalta Peace Conference, Threads of Empire uncovers a new, hitherto hidden past right beneath our feet.
ISBN-10: 1250321433
ISBN-13: 9781250321435
Author: Armstrong, Dorothy
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781250321435

ISBN-10: 1250321433

Publish Date: June 17, 2025

On Sale Date: June 17, 2025

Language: English

Pages: 368

Dimensions: 9.3 × 6.5 × 1.5 in

Weight: 1.3 lbs

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