Books on Weaving in Chiapas, Mexico

Click on this link to go to Amazon: Weaving Generations Together: Evolving Creativity in the Maya of Chiapas (Resident Scholar)

Product Description

For centuries, the Zinacantec Maya women of Mexico have woven and embroidered textiles that express their social and aesthetic values and embody their role as mothers and daughters. Boasting more than two hundred striking and detailed photographs of Zinacantec textiles and their makers, this innovative study provides a rare long-term examination of the cognitive and socialization processes involved in transmitting weaving knowledge across two generations. Author Patricia Marks Greenfield first visited the village of Nabenchauk in 1969 and 1970. Her return in 1991 and regular visits through 2003 enable her to combine a scholarly study of the impact of commercialization and globalization on textile production and sales, acculturation, and female socialization with poignant personal reflections on mother-daughter relationships, creativity, and collaboration. Her collection of data and range of approaches make this book a major contribution to studies of cognition and socialization, the life cycles of material culture, and the anthropology of the Maya. Weaving Generations Together will appeal to both the academic specialist and anyone who admires Maya weaving and culture.

Living Maya

From Publishers Weekly
Curator Morris and photographer Foxx here offer a rare glimpse of the vibrant contemporary Mayan culture. Classic Mayan civilization collapsed in the 10th century, but, writes Morris, three million Maya reside in Yucatan, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Another million "extremely conservative" Maya, isolated from outsiders, live in the Chiapas Highlands of Mexico, and they are the subject of this volume: "The food they eat, the way it is prepared, the stories, myths and dreams they tell..., the festivals they celebrate each season of the year are all parts of a tradition that the Maya say God gave to them 'at the beginning of the world.' " This rich tapestry of history, myths, pen-and-ink drawings and striking color pictures evokes multifarious landscapes, textiles, people and ritual. The detailed description of the ancient technique of weaving will interest students of art, anthropology and religion alike.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
The first book to document the life of the Maya of today, a remarkable people who are the direct heirs to the magnificent Maya culture of Pre-Columbian times. Living Maya captures the spirit of an extraordinary people. 125 full-color photographs and 25 line drawings.

Living Fabric: Weaving Among The Nomads Of Ladakh Himalaya

Living Fabric: Weaving Among The Nomads Of Ladakh Himalaya

Product Description
This is the first study of the tradition of weaving among the nomadic pastoralists of Rupshu, in eastern Ladakh. Weaving touches all aspects of life in Rupshu, where both women and men weave, each on a different type of loom. Local narrative states that the craft of weaving was bestowed upon Rupshu by the gods, and thus all feats related to it have a close connection to the sublime. This book documents and analyses the ways in which fibers, weaving, and textiles are symbolized, constructed, and experienced in Rupshu where themes such as gender, kinship, hierarchical and spatial relations find ready expression through the design and making of cloth. Through her work the author traces the relationship between livestock, weaving, social and symbolic structures in order to understand the multitude of contexts within which wool-oriented activities exist. Richly illustrated, this book will appeal to those with an interest in textiles, nomads, gender studies, and the Himalaya.

About the Author
Monisha Ahmed has been visiting and writing about the Himalayan region of Ladakh since 1987. She is co-founder of the Ladakh Arts and Multi-cultural Outreach Trust, a non-government organization that works with the arts in Ladakh and is in the process of establishing a locally based arts resource center in Leh.

Miniature Crafts and Their Makers: Palm Weaving in a Mexican Town

Miniature Crafts and Their Makers: Palm Weaving in a Mexican Town

Review
"An extremely engaging, accessible study of this artistic tradition, its interconnections, and cultural significance." -- Tey Marianna Nunn, Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe

Product Description
Katrin Flechsig presents the first in-depth ethnographic and historical examination of Mexico's miniature palm craft industry, taking readers behind the scenes to explain how and why these folk arts have undergone miniaturization over the past several decades. She reveals how such factors as tourism and the construction of national identity have contributed to an ongoing demand for the tiny creations, and also contrasts the playfulness of the crafts with the often harsh economic and political realities of life in the community.

Traditional Textiles of the Andes: Life and Cloth in the Highlands

Traditional Textiles of the Andes: Life and Cloth in the Highlands

Product Description
The Andean Mountains are home to a rich heritage of textile design and weaving. In particular, cloth has traditionally been the most significant art form and cultural vehicle of the Aymara and Quechua peoples. Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, this book features eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century indigenous textiles woven by the Aymara and Quechua. The elaborately patterned pieces are all drawn from the previously unpublished Jeffrey Appleby Collection and include everyday and ceremonial textiles of all types: ponchos, skirts, belts, hats, and slings. The accompanying essays by Lynn Ann Meisch, Amy Oakland Rodman, Ed Franquemont, and Margot Blum Schevill address such topics as the long history of fibers, dyes, imagery, and textile use in the region; and the effects of urbanization and westernization on traditional Andean weaving.

African Elegance

African Elegance

Product Description
In Africa, beaded ornaments may mark an individual's progress through life, and intricate woven fabrics chronicle the deeds of warriors and kings. "African Elegance" delves into the ways in which such traditional objects as masks, jewelry, and wooden vessels are used in contemporary African society. From the vibrant, carved coffins of Ghana and the treasures made by sixteenth-century Benin metal smiths to the sleek objects in serpentine crafted by the Shona sculptors of Zimbabwe, "African Elegance" dynamically explores how native Africans display themselves, exchange messages, and tell stories through craft. An object as beautiful as the work it celebrates, "African Elegance" is a stunningly photographed chronicle of art and personal adornment.

Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals

Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals

Product Description
The Quechua people of southern Peru are both agriculturalists and herders who maintain large herds of alpacas and llamas. But they are also weavers, and it is through weaving that their cultural traditions are passed down over the generations. Owing to the region’s isolation, the textile symbols, forms of clothing, and technical processes remain strongly linked to the people’s environment and their ancestors.

Heckman’s photographs convey the warmth and vitality of the Quechua people and illustrate how the land is intricately woven into their lives and their beliefs.

Quechua weavers in the mountainous regions near Cuzco, Peru, produce certain textile forms and designs not found elsewhere in the Andes. Their textiles are a legacy of their Andean ancestors. Andrea Heckman has devoted more than twenty years to documenting and analyzing the ways Andean beliefs persist over time in visual symbols embedded in textiles and portrayed in rituals. Her primary focus is the area around the sacred peak of Ausangate, in southern Peru, some eighty-five miles southeast of the former Inca capital of Cuzco.

The core of this book is an ethnographic account of the textiles and their place in daily life that considers how the form and content of Quechua patterns and designs pass stories down and preserve traditions as well as how the ritual use of textiles sustain a sense of community and a connection to the past. Heckman concludes by assessing the influences of the global economy on indigenous Quechua, who maintain their own worldview within the larger fabric of twentieth-century cultural values and hence have survived everything from Latin American militarism to a tidal wave of post-modern change.

Navajo Weaving Way: The Path from Fleece to Rug

Navajo Weaving Way: The Path from Fleece to Rug

From Library Journal
The publisher has performed a real service in making available the work of Bennett, whose books on Navajo weaving and tradition have been out of print for some time. In 1968, as young woman, Bennett moved to the Navajo reservation in Arizona planning a two-year stay to learn traditional Navajo weaving and spinning techniques. She remained for eight years, learned to weave under the tutelage of Tiana Bighorse, and began a life-long fascination with the Navajo way of life. This volume is a reworking of Bennett's Working with the Wool (1971), The Weaver's Pathway (1974), and Designing with the Wool (1979), combining material from these earlier books with new information on Navajo spinning and dyeing techniques. Recommended for scholarly decorative arts holdings as well as public how-to collections.

Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
Navajo Weaving Way is a compilation of Nol Bennett's earlier, out-of-print books on Navajo rug-weaving traditions: Working with the Wool, Designing with the Wool, and The Weaver's Pathway. This book augments the information in Bennett's previous works with all-new chapters on spinning, carding, and dyeing techniques. Illustrations include photographs by John Running of Navajo women carding, spinning, and weaving, along with detailed line drawings depicting specific techniques.