TEXTILES

TEXTILES . Processing fiber into thread and transforming those threads into fabrics, possibly the oldest human technology, first appear on the cultural horizon during the Neolithic period, between twelve and fifteen thousand years ago. Not until the sixth millennium bce, however, do fragments of textiles excavated at sites in central Europe and the Middle East provide evidence for their inclusion in ritual or religious contexts. These grave furnishings and occasional finds from refuse dumps suggest purpose and intent; however, the archaeological record is far from complete. The documentation of the actual meanings of many ritual practices involving fabric is, in most cases, relatively recent. Despite differences in time and space and the fact that few causal links exist among the cultures discussed here, the practices involving textiles in religious rites and ceremonies can be considered in three broad categories: (1) symbolic meanings associated with textiles, (2) ritual functions for textiles within religious practices, and (3) links between the sacred and the profane realms.

Textiles as Symbols

In most societies that developed textile technologies, cloth and its production served as metaphors for life. In Greek mythology, for example, three goddesses known as the Moirai controlled the lives of mortals. The Fates, as they are more commonly known, include Clotho the spinner, who creates the web of life; Lachesis, who measures its length; and Atropos, who cuts it. The physical act of interlacing prepared threads on a frame to create textiles is a powerful symbol. The spinning of thread, its winding onto bobbins, and the warping of the loom symbolize conception, gestation, and birth. The process of weaving evokes the vicissitudes of life, growth, and maturity. Cutting the cloth from the loom can symbolize death, but more frequently it symbolizes rebirth and renewal because the process creates an object that can then be used.

In parts of South Asia and the South Pacific the physical form of a newly woven cloth is tubular because the warp yarns are continuous and form an uninterrupted circle between the two beams of the loom. When the cloth is finished only a small section of the warp yarns remains unwoven. For normal use the textile is cut open across this area. The rich metaphorical potential of the continuous yarns in the uncut cloth became obvious to diverse groups within the Indonesian archipelago. Among the Sasak tribes on the island of Lombok in eastern Indonesia, three sacred tubular cloths are made for a child at birth by the eldest woman weaver in the family. These are stored in a sacred area of the house until needed. In the course of the hair-cutting, circumcision, and marriage rites, the warps of these textiles are cut. Although deceptively modest in appearance, these red, yellow, black, and white striped cotton textiles are endowed with significance affecting the general well-being of individuals. Farther west, on the island of Bali, the more elaborate geringsing, decorated with double ikat-patterns, have similar metaphorical significance. Geringsing also have a circular warp that must be cut to form a cloth. A single cloth, which may take over a year to produce, accompanies an individual throughout each life-crisis ceremony; ultimately it serves as a funeral pall for the corpse.

The associations with female textile "producers" reflect other, more nuanced cultural meanings. Across the ages dowries have involved fine textiles and the presumption that these specialized fabrics embodied a bride's skills to provide for and clothe the family. Entire industries in many parts of the world, like those still flourishing in Morocco, cater to the wedding trade and, despite their patriarchical commercialization, are evidence of the link between textiles and life processes. The productive and fructifying qualities associated with women are transferred to dowry textiles, which in turn function as fertility symbols. When juxtaposed with male symbols in metal or agricultural products, textiles evoke a complementary polarity, a polarity well illustrated in the archaeological and ethnographic record. The second-century ce graves of Dian nobles excavated in Southwest China at the sites of Shizaishan and Lijaishan, for example, contained bronze models of looms, other weaving tools, and sewing boxes in female graves; comparable male burials were furnished with bronze weapons and models of agricultural tools.

Together, tools or weapons and textiles symbolized completion and ideals of cosmic harmony. Echoes of this notion are found in legends of the ancient Mediterranean and Asian worlds that personified the annual conjunction of two stars within the Milky Way as the weaving maiden and the herdsman.

Ritual Uses for Textiles

In Jewish tradition the tassel or tzitzit at each corner of a man's tallith, which is worn as an undergarment, consists of eight strings and five knots wrapped in specific ways to equal the numerical value of one of the names of god. The numerical value of the word tzitzit (together with the eight strings and five knots on each corner) adds up to 613, the number of mitzvoth, or obligations, in the Torah.

Binding

Present-day Hindu practice continues to use a thread or cord as the symbol of renewal, creating a closed circle that ties the worshiper to the principles of the faith. During Upanayana, a rite-of-passage ceremony, sacred cords are placed over the shoulders of adolescent boys to signify their eligibility for education within the caste tradition. For the brahman caste the thread is cotton; for the kṣatriya (warrior or ruler) caste the cord is hemp; for the vaiśya (artisan or merchant) caste the cord is wool. Women also use the sacred thread within rituals. For example, at the annual festival of the goddess Gauri, a cotton thread sixteen times the woman's height is wound into a skein and laid before images of the goddess. Later the skein is worn around the neck, then buried or burned.

Ritual bonding frequently uses textiles. The priest's stole that drapes the joined hands of a couple during the marriage ceremony in the Western and Eastern Christian Church in effect becomes the tie that binds man to woman and the couple to the church, reinforcing the sanctity of marriage. In many Muslim societies ritual bonding occurs when the bridal couple is invited to sit on a shared mat or textile. Among the Batak tribes of northern Sumatra the climax of the traditional marriage ceremony is the enveloping of the couple in a single textile by the bride's father. Other members of the immediate family are also wrapped in shawls during the course of the ceremony, further emphasizing the bonds this event celebrates.

Offering

Literally hundreds of blankets, bolts of cloth, and other utilitarian textiles, as well as great quantities of nontextile domestic and ritual goods, were amassed by extended family groups among the tribes of the northwest coast of North America for potlatch feasts. They were presented to guests or burned in extravagant demonstrations of exchange. In contemporary revivals, commercial cloth and clothing are exchanged. Although less dramatic, the imported Chinese white silk scarves patterned with Buddhist symbols and the simple Indian white cotton gauze scarves used by Tibetan Buddhists convey a similar sense of offering and sacrifice. In the wool-producing regions of the Tibetan Plateau these exotic imports were tokens of exchange between individuals upon meeting and offerings to images. Tibetans also offer rectangles of cotton cloth block-printed with prayers to the elements as acts of devotion. Flown from poles, suspended on lines, or tied to the roofs of temples and shrines, these textiles are literally destroyed by the winds that activate intercessions with the gods.

Funeral customs provide other insights into textile-offering practices. Although knowledge of the actual practice is far from complete, the archaeological record for pharaonic Egypt and pre-Columbian Peru is spectacular. The dry climates of the Egyptian desert and of coastal Peru have preserved vast quantities of textiles used in burial. Egyptians wrapped mummies of the dead in fine linen. Complete wardrobes of clothes and household linens, reflecting the status and means of the individual in life, were also interred to provide the comforts of this earth in the next world. Along the dry south coast of Peru, pre-Columbian mummy bundles of aristocrats contain numerous finely woven and embroidered sets of wool and cotton clothes as well as large quantities of other fine textiles.

In China, where silk was a principal trade commodity as well as the imperial standard for the payment and collection of taxes, silk textiles played a major role in life and death. Throughout the centuries the number and quality of burial clothes reflected the status of the individual in life. The remarkably well-preserved chambered tomb of the Lady Dai at Mawangdui, Changsha, which dates from about 160 bce, contained over twenty-seven items of silk apparel, including some twelve coats, forty-six rolls of uncut silk, and numerous silk wrappers and bags. During the later imperial period the custom of preparing clothes especially decorated with characters meaning "long life" (the so-called shufu, or "longevity" coats) arose, but burial clothes mainly copied an individual's official wardrobe, which designated rank at court. Archaeology has also revealed abuses of the rules of entitlement, such as the garments recovered from the tombs of Xu Fan (1463–1530) and his wife from Taizhou, Jiangsu province, in which the wive's robes outranked those of her husband by two ranks.

Although there are instances of funeral textiles recycled from life, such as the bridal garments used for the burials of Chinese women, which reflected a most exalted status in the rigid patriarchial society that largely ignored women, most were specially acquired for burial. The obligation and expense for a Confucian funeral were borne by the next generation of the family. By contrast, nineteenth-century aristocrats on the island of Timor in eastern Indonesia devoted considerable amounts of time and money to amassing quantities of prestige textiles for their own burials.

Sacrifices do not always involve fabrics of the greatest economic or aesthetic value. For some cultures specific textiles are produced for shrouds. The traditional burial clothing of Jews is a set of simple, untailored linen garments. In Bali the sacred cloths called bebali are in effect token textiles made only for offering. Loosely woven, they are too fragile for use; most are too small to function as clothing for the living. During the late imperial period in China and continuing into the twenty-first century, sets of paper clothes and models of bolts of silk are as offerings to the dead for the next life.

Textile offerings were important in rituals honoring personified deities. In pharaonic Egypt images of gods within cult temples were centers of elaborate ceremonies that imitated human life. Gods were awakened in the morning, fed, bathed, and clothed, taken on festive outings, and put to bed at night, not unlike the pharaoh, the living manifestation of god on earth. Aqllawasi (House of Chosen Women), often referred to as Virgins of the Sun, was a cloistered community of Quechua noble women devoted to the cult of the Sun God. Among their duties was the weaving of clothing for the ruler or Inka, the embodiment of the Sun God on earth. Perhaps the most celebrated textile offering of antiquity was the annual Panathenaia in Athens, an event commemorated on the inner frieze of the Parthenon. The climax of the festival was a procession carrying the costly new peplos made by the women of Athens to the Acropolis and the presentation of this garment to the cult image of Pallas Athena.

Offerings of clothing to temple images were frequent occurrences throughout Buddhist, Hindu, Daoist, and Confucian Asia. In late imperial China, for example, where the giving of prestige cloths marked the New Year as well as birthday celebrations, many of the city gods were presented on these occasions with new robes, cut especially large and often without side seams, a fact frequently recorded in pious inscriptions by donors.

Icons

In some cultures textiles themselves are venerated. The effigies of the hearth deities worshiped by nomadic Mongols were made entirely of felt. These special effigies, called ongot, one identified as male, the other female, were kept inside the yurt. In Buddhism, before the development of a rich figural iconography following the second century ce, images of the Buddha's attributes, including his mantle and his throne with its textile-covered cushion, served the faithful as a symbolic focus for worship. The legend and the numerous illustrations of Veronica's veil or the much-celebrated linen shroud preserved in the cathedral at Turin, which bears a human image said to be that of the crucified Christ, are two examples of venerable textiles from the Christian tradition. Among Muslims the presentation of the cloth cover from a saint's tomb is a means of conveying blessings on an honored visitor.

Among the Toraja tribes of central Sulawesi, a group of sacred textiles called ma'a and sarita embody spiritual power. These textiles are heirlooms handed down through families; they are used for display on many ritual and ceremonial occasions. Some of these textiles are of local manufacture, but many are made of imported Indian cotton cloth that has been painted with Torajan symbols.

In Tibet, maṇḍala s depicting various deities in the Buddhist pantheon were constructed in the appliqué technique from Chinese silks and other exotic fabrics donated to monasteries. The most impressive examples were the gigantic maṇḍala s measuring over twenty meters in length that were displayed once a year against the facade of the Potala in Lhasa.

Creation of a sacred place

The place where a ritual or ceremony is performed may have a temporal as well as a spatial dimension. The suspension of normal time to create a temporal framework in which humans can commune with the supernatural can be aided by textiles in several ways. For example, the repeated use of textiles or sets of textiles, such as the red vestments and altar furnishings employed in the Western Christian Church within the same context over time (e.g., for feast days of martyrs), emphasizes a sense of ritual cycle that is permanent despite the passage of real time. The use of the same textile within a sequence of events, as is done with the geringsing cloths from the island of Bali, achieves for the participant a sense of suspended animation. A third sense of ritual time is embodied in the notion of transformation: special furnishings or clothing can dramatize the transformation of a place into the presence of a god or of the individual into a servant or intermediary of the god.

Textiles also have spatial functions, creating a sacred precinct within a larger profane context. On the most fundamental level, textiles can provide a focus for ritual. The act of spreading a cloth, whether it is the simple linen textile that covers the top of the Christian altar or the elaborately patterned silk covers for the Buddhist incense tables, transforms a table into an altar.

The kiswah, the most important textile in Islam, covers the Kaʿbah in Mecca, a square granite structure that immures the Black Stone. The stone itself predates the founding of Islam, but it became the most sacred relic of the religion and the focus of Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. The kiswah is made of black silk with Qurʾanic inscriptions woven or embroidered in gold. Covering a cubical structure roughly twelve meters high, the kiswah is a dramatic indicator of a sacred precinct. It is replaced annually, and the older textile is cut into pieces that are sold as relics.

Textiles suspended over a ritual area transform the space beneath to offer real or symbolic protection. Some are portable, like the wedding canopies common to many faiths. In effect they transform any space beneath them into a ritual area and are reused as occasion demands. Other canopies convey cosmological meaning. Those placed over altars or above images in Christian or Buddhist buildings, for example, serve as metaphors for heaven, contrasting the visual universe or firmament with the larger perceived but invisible heaven beyond.

The pierced quatrefoil canopy called yunjian in Chinese, meaning "cloud collar," which is placed on the apex of Mongol felt yurts, is of central Asian or southern Siberian origin. Its four pendant points promote spatial orientation with the cardinal points of the compass; the hole at the top is called a sky door and symbolizes the gate to heaven, through which the earth axis passes. The application of this shape around the necks of garments, which also arose on the steppe, conferred a notion of cosmic orientation to the wearer.

Fabric may also cover the area on which ritual occurs. Mats and carpets indicate places for prayer and meditation in most Asian cultures, which did not develop elaborate furniture for sitting but lived primarily on the floor. For example, small square woolen carpets decorated with Buddhist symbols were commonly used by Buddhist monks in Tibet. High-ranking clergy, however, often sat on silk-covered cushions.

Some floor coverings promote ideas of spatial orientation. Within many of the powerful agrarian empires across the world, the precise arrangement of specific floor coverings and other furnishings within a ritual area ensured the success of the ceremony. A fourth-century bce text, the Shujing (Book of history), describes the proper procedure for setting up the offerings for the burial of a prince, with detailed instructions concerning the appropriate carpet, offering table, and sacrifice for each of the cardinal points within the tomb area. In other instances single textiles function as spatial indicators: the organization of motifs in certain Mongol, Turkish, and Chinese carpets within the rectilinear confines of the textile imply a correct alignment.

The most famed ritual floor covering, the so-called Muslim prayer carpet, is traditionally decorated with an arch at one end echoing the miḥrāb niche in the mosque, which orients prayer toward Mecca. However, the function of these carpets is independent of decoration, since they provide a spatial substitute for worship within a mosque to assist the faithful in discharging the obligation of prayer five times a day. No specific carpets are prescribed for the mosque floor. If anything were to be considered the first religiously prescribed floor covering, it would be the simple plaited palm-leaf mat used by nomadic Arabs. But once Islam came into contact with the artistically sophisticated cultures of western Asia, custom and taste dictated design. Historically, many carpets were merely decorative; however, some were undoubtedly used for prayer within the home.

Textiles have served as portable shrines for nomadic peoples, and some of these textile environments survive among settled populations. The mahmal tents used during the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca are one example.

Textile curtains act as screens shielding sacred ritual areas and guarding access to them. Although a distancing device, these textiles afford the celebrants a ritual dramatic effect when they are suddenly parted to reveal mystery. The ark curtain or parochet (Hebrew, parokhet ) is the main ritual textile within Jewish practice. Its precedents can be found in the tabernacle described in chapter 26 of Exodus. This record of one of the most celebrated of the portable ritual-textile environments profoundly influenced the ritual trappings of later Jewish and Christian practice. Within Ashkenazic tradition the standard parochet consists of a prestige cloth framed between two pillars and a lintel, a device previously thought to relate to sixteenth-century title pages from printed books. The form may well have more ancient precedents, however, recalling times when practice demanded large curtains hung between architectural bays to subdivide areas of worship. Archaeological evidence from the third-century ce synagogue at Dura-Europos in Syria reveals that a large curtain divided the area in front of the Torah shrine from the congregation. This custom of using curtains to subdivide spaces within religious and secular architecture was widespread in the Near East and the Mediterranean during classical times.

This pattern influenced early Christian worship as well. In the early centuries of the Christian era, large curtains were used to articulate space within the church or meeting room to accommodate different audiences. Part of the building was accessible to nonbelievers, and other provisions were made for those under instruction but not yet baptized. The faithful were divided into groups, with men and women occupying different areas; the clergy had an area around the altar. In the West large curtains disappeared from the interiors of religious buildings with the rise of the Romanesque architectural style around the year 1000. The parochet and the tabernacle veils of the Western Christian Church are humble reminders of times when interiors were lavishly decorated with textiles.

Large curtains remained in use in the Eastern Christian Church for a time, but the development of the iconostasis on which icons were displayed gradually replaced the portable curtains separating the sanctuary from the nave. The amphithyron, a smaller curtain that hung behind the central doors of the iconostasis, is all that remains of the more elaborate curtaining systems. Only in Ethiopian churches practicing Coptic rites do large dividing curtains survive.

The notion of concealment is present at other levels as well, particularly in practices that shield sacred paraphernalia from the eyes of the uninitiated or from direct contact with the profane hand. In the Christian Church the chalice and the Host, as well as many of the accoutrements used in the service, are only revealed at the appropriate moment in the ritual; at other times they are veiled from sight. The Torah mantles, made of the most costly silk and gold-enriched fabrics, the simple tie-dyed silk curtains that hang in front of the painted images of Tibetan Buddhist maṇḍala s, and the elaborately embroidered epitaphios sindon of the Greek Orthodox rite, which veils the chalice and paten, serve identical functions.

Textile Links between the Sacred and the Profane Realms

Throughout history textiles have conveyed both symbolic and economic meaning. Before the industrial age reduced most textiles to the realm of disposable consumer goods, all textiles possessed real value as the product of the labor invested in cultivating, spinning, dyeing, and weaving. These labor factors, as well as the materials, skills, and ritual meanings, conferred prestige that could be transferred. Many religious organizations relied on cloistered workshops to produce liturgical textiles. These establishments were often managed by women, whose textile production calls to mind specialized dowry manufacture. Some particularly time-consuming specialized techniques associated with these workshops are like pious acts of devotion embodying repetitive invocations and blessings. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, secular schools for young noble women—like the Smol'nyi Institute founded by Catherine the Great and the Maison royale de Saint-Cyr established by Madame de Maintenon—were modeled on cloistered ateliers. These schools produced fine textiles for the church as well as for aristocractic households, as evidenced by the surviving fabrics dating from the late Medieval period. The largest number of textiles used within religious ceremony have neither ritual function nor meaning as religious symbols. Rather, their purpose is self-consciously decorative. Whether temporary or permanent, these textiles enhance ritual through splendid display. These decorations often featured fabrics that had been transformed from secular uses for the purpose. Many churches encouraged the donation of secular prestige textiles by the faithful as a meritorious deed, and this cache of prestige goods was available for recycling. Particularly valuable textiles were often used to wrap relics and other sacred items before placing them in reliquaries for storage. In the West many examples of the medieval silks survive only from these contexts.

Banners and hangings announce the special character of ritual space. They can be carried in procession or used for interior display. Most of these objects are showy and made of lightweight materials; some, such as the banners used in Buddhist temples, have long streamers that add movement as well as color to ritual space. Banners bearing images of deities convey popular iconography and may serve an informal educative function, but in general they are difficult to distinguish from comparable secular decoration.

Textiles that adorn the interior walls of worship halls, like the wall paintings many of them replaced, are commonly didactic. The painted cotton temple hangings from northern India, for example, often depict stories from Hindu mythology. Many of the tapestry sets woven for religious institutions in medieval Europe illustrate the lives of the saints or depict apocalyptic visions. In the West the popularity of such monumental textiles lapsed with the rise of the Gothic architectural style. The Graham Sutherland tapestry at Coventry Cathedral is an outstanding example of the twentieth-century revival of tapestry weaving that has affected contemporary Western Christian Church decoration.

Carpets may cover the floors, cushioning bare feet as in the mosques of Islam, decorate the space before the altar as in Christian practice, or wrap the pillars of the worship hall as in Tibet and China. In most cases these lavish displays are more apt to result from pious donation of secular goods than from ritual requirements.

A vast range of covers for lecterns, reading desks, books, scrolls, cushions, kneelers, and furniture utilize fine textiles. Textile valances enhance architectural settings. The kapporet (cover) placed over the Torah curtain transforms the Torah shrine into the mercy seat of the Ark of the Tabernacle. In East Asian religious contexts, elaborately embroidered valances were often added to the niches in which image shrines were placed. Some of these were special commissions donated to the temples. One popular Chinese Buddhist valance type was made as a patchwork by members of the congregation from personal textiles or from temple supplies of donated textiles.

In the same way that most vestments used by religions throughout the world were derived from secular clothing, many of the decorative textiles that have become associated with ritual also have secular origins. One group of textiles in particular, however, remains virtually unchanged from its secular usage. Cloths of state, throne covers, footstool covers, umbrellas, and baldachins are statements of secular political power. They designate rank and position within the clergy (of Western Christian traditions, Judaism and Buddhism) for purposes of prestige and control rather than ritual.

See Also

Clothing; Kaʿbah.

Bibliography

In the absence of a comprehensive investigation of textiles used in ritual and ceremony, information is scattered in many sources, and data are inconsistent from culture to culture. General references to the roles textiles play in ritual are in Michael V. Angrosino's The Culture of the Sacred (Prospect Heights, Ill., 2004), and Catherine M. Bell's Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York and Oxford, 1992). A number of papers that cover the aspects of ritual textiles are in Lynne Milgram and Penny Van Esterik, eds., The Transformative Power of Cloth in Southeast Asia (Toronto, 1994), and Textile Society of America, Sacred and Ceremonial Textiles, Proceedings of the Fifth Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of American, Chicago, Illinois, 1996 (Minneapolis, 1997).

For the Christian Church, scholarship has focused largely on vestments. Identification of nonvestment textiles used in Christian ritual is in J. Wickham Legg's Notes on the History of the Liturgical Colours, Transactions of the St. Paul's Ecclesiological Society (London, 1882), and in Legg's Church Ornaments and Their Civil Antecedents (Cambridge, U.K., 1917). Among the best explanations of the origins and uses of textiles in Jewish ritual is Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's Fabric of Jewish Life (New York, 1977). This exhibition catalog to the collection of ritual and ceremonial textiles in the Jewish Museum collection is well illustrated and contains a good bibliography.

Specific aspects of the use of textiles within ancient and historical Western religious contexts are in Elizabeth Grace Crowfoot, "The Clothing of a Fourteenth-Century Nubian Bishop," pp. 43–51; Veronika Gervers, "An Early Christian Curtain in the Royal Ontario Museum," pp. 56–81; and Donald King, "How Many Apocalypse Tapestries?," pp. 160–167; all of which are in Studies in Textile History: In Memory of Harold B. Burnham, edited by Veronika Gervers (Toronto, 1977). In addition, this Festschrift contains Rita Bolland, "Weaving the Pinatikan, a Warp-Patterned Kain Bentenan from North Celebes," pp. 1–17, and John E. Vollmer, "Archaeological and Ethnographical Considerations of the Foot-Braced Body-Tension Loom," pp. 343–354, both of which discuss non-Western textiles. R. B. Serjeant's Islamic Textiles: Material for a History up to the Mongol Conquest (Beirut, 1972), which was originally published serially in Ars Islamica 9–14 (1942–1951), is the basic reference for Islamic textiles. A good source for both Islamic and East Asian carpets is M. S. Dimand's Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1973). In addition to the catalog to the Metropolitan Museum's considerable collection, this volume includes a series of essays documenting the use of carpets in Asia as well as their earliest appearances in the West.

One of the best references for the East Asian region in English is J. J. M. de Groot's The Religious System of China: Its Ancient Forms, Evolution, History, and Present Aspect, Manners, Customs, and Social Institutions Connected Therewith (Leiden, 1892–1910). This six-volume study remains one of the best standard references on traditional religious practices in China. Leonardo Olschki's The Myth of Felt (Berkeley, Calif., 1949) contains a perceptive essay on the significance of this material in traditional Mongol society. Articles by international scholars documenting ritual use of textiles throughout the Indonesian Archipelago are in Mattibelle Gittinger, ed., Indonesian Textiles: Irene Emery Roundtable on Museum Textiles, 1979 Proceedings (Washington, D.C., 1980). Other Asian practices are dicussed in Alice Beck Kehoe's Shamans and Religion (Prospect Heights, Ill., 2000); and Rosemary Crill, Steven Cohen, and Ruth Barnes, Court, Temple, and Trade: Indian Textiles in the Tapi Collection (Mumbai, India, 2002). References to textiles within the Tibetan context are in the five-volume catalog by the Newark Museum, Catalogue of the Tibetan Collection and Other Lamaist Articles in the Newark Museum (Newark, N.J., 1950–1971).

References to New World practices are in Laurie Adelson and Arthur Tracht, Aymara Weavings: Ceremonial Textiles of Colonial and Nineteenth-Century Bolivia (Washington, D.C., 1983), and Ann Pollard Rowe and John Cohen, Hidden Threads of Peru: Q'ero Textiles (Washington, D.C., 2002).

John E. Vollmer (1987 and 2005)