Early Coptic Textiles

by Suzanne Lewis

Exhibition catalog

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1969

Reviews

[Horus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was intended to accompany an exhibit of early Coptic textiles, held at the Stanford Art Gallery from May 4-25, 1969. The introduction provides some basic information about the Coptic peoples of Egypt and the archeological research into their history, at the time of publication. The author also briefly discusses colour sources for dyes, the types of clothing design that these fragments were part of, the history of weaving in the area, the development of the collection and the nature of the woven designs themselves. The rest of the book is a catalogue discussion of the exhibit, by number, with only a few of the 51 pieces lacking an accompanying photo. For the time, the black and white photos are pretty clear and provide some decent detail of the finds. There are no magnified or close-up photos. There are no photos in colour. In some cases, I’m not sure a colour photo wouldn’t blur some of the detail that a greyscale makes obvious, but it would be nice to see the variety of colour as described in the catalogue. For its day, this is a respectable entry resource into this topic. Reading something like this always raises the hope for me that the artifacts are still extant, such that more modern photos and studies can be made of such works.

[Heather Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

This looked interesting but turned out to be boring. A exhibition catalog for an event at the Stanford Art Gallery back in 1969, it's basically a collection of decorative parts of Coptic textiles that have been snipped out of their context (literally). The pictures are all black and white. No complete garments. All fairly standard designs. Oh well.