The rich and diverse range of silk textiles from Africa is an unexpected revelation. This book focuses on over thirty pieces from the British Museum's spectacular collection, bringing together for the first time the highly distinctive traditions of silk weaving and embroidery from throughout the African continent. These range from textiles commissioned by royalty and high-ranking officials, such as the striking cloths of the Asante (Ghana) or gowns from Ethiopia encrusted with gold, to less prestigious but no less glorious pieces such as a multicoloured Merina burial shroud from Madagascar. As a pattern sourcebook the reader will find inspiration for striking colour and tonal combinations as well as myriad ideas for using stripes, geometrics and stylized figurative motifs.In their introduction the authors bring the textiles to life by examining who made them, how ideas travelled across the continent and the significance of pattern and symbolism. In addition, all the principal techniques are explained while brief commentaries highlight the design features. Whether you are interested in graphic design or technical detail, this inspiring book will be the first to open your eyes to a previously unexplored aspect of Africa.

Silk in Africa

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Spring, Chris

Hudson, Julie

Antiques & Collectibles

Univ of Washington Pr

This book opens with the question, What is African art? The answer is a brilliantly colorful and detailed look at the myriad materials and genres, forms and meanings, cultural contexts and expressions that comprise artistic traditions across this vast and varied continent. Viewing artworks in their contexts—ancient and modern, urban and rural, western and eastern, decorative and functional—the book is nothing less than a virtual tour of African culture. Masks, textiles, royal art, sculpture, ceramics, tools and weapons—in each instance, the book features examples that reveal the most significant aspects of workmanship, materials, and design in objects of wood, stone, ivory, clay, metalwork, featherwork, leather, basketwork, and cloth. Photographs of each piece alongside close-ups of fine details afford new views of these works and allow for intriguing comparisons between seemingly unrelated objects and media. The featured details evoke the hand and eye of the most accomplished craftspeople across Africa, past and present. In sum, these photographs, along with Chris Spring’s enlightening commentary, offer an experience of African art that is at once broad and deep, richly informed and intimately felt. They are, at the same time, a kaleidoscopic view of art from prehistory to gestures prefiguring the future.

African Art in Detail

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Harvard University Press

Ideal as a spur to creative inspiration, this beautiful book offers an alternative view of African art. The book highlights in close-up and brilliant colour the most breathtaking aspects of workmanship, materials and design found in exquisite objects of wood, stone, ivory, ceramic, metalwork, featherwork, leather, basketwork and textiles. The book opens with an introduction asking What is African art? This sets the art, in all its complex layers of form and meaning, within the context of the myriad cultures and environments which make up this vast continent and examines the artistic traditions that created these pieces. The chapters that follow explore these extraordinary objects and designs in terms of common themes through stunning close-up photographs, allowing the reader insight even closer than a behind-the-scenes museum tour. By showing the complete piece alongside a detail, the book provides a fresh view of each object which often allows for intriguing comparisons between seemingly unrelated objects and media. The selection of details evokes the hand and eye of the most accomplished African craftsmen and women, past and present.

African Art in Detail /anglais

Reference

BRITISH MUSEUM

African Textiles Today illustrates how African history is read, told, and recorded in cloth. All artifacts or works of art hold within them stories that range far beyond the time of their creation or the lifetime of their creator, and African textiles are patterned with these hidden histories. In Africa, cloth may be used to memorialize or commemorate something - an event, a person, a political cause - which in other parts of the world might be written down in detail or recorded by a plaque or monument. History in Africa can be read, told, and recorded in cloth. Making and trading numerous types of cloth have been vital elements in African life and culture for at least two millennia, linking different parts of the continent with each other and the rest of the world. Africa's long engagement with the peoples of the Mediterranean and the islands of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans provides a story of change and continuity. African Textiles Today shows how ideas, techniques, materials, and markets have adapted and flourished, and how the dynamic traditions in African textiles have provided inspiration for the continent's foremost contemporary artists and photographers. With a concluding chapter discussing the impact of African designs across the world, the book offers a fascinating insight into the living history of Africa.

African Textiles Today

Smithsonian Books

Ted & Pterry

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Fantasy

Olympia Publishers

The mission of this book is to illustrate Africa's immensely fertile artistic landscape. Africa has emerged from its colonial past and is asserting its own identity. African art is not only confined to the continent itself, but has spread world-wide through the work of those descended from the enforced migrations of the slave trade and those who have more recently left their homesin Africa to take their place on an international stage. This book brings together more than 60 of Africa's most creative contemporary artists, drawn from across the African continent as well as from Europe, North America, the Caribbean, and South America. Their art leaps off the page with over 350 color images (many especially commissioned). In addition to painters, sculptors, and photographers, there are a number of artists whose work embraces performance and installation. Many of the materials they use are as unorthodox astheir imagery, with ready made and found objects.

Angaza Africa: African Art Now

Laurence King Publishing

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Books by Spring, Chris