The Art of Cloth in Mughal India - by Sylvia Houghteling (Hardcover)

About the Book

"When a rich man in seventeenth-century South Asia enjoyed a peaceful night's sleep, he imagined himself enveloped in a velvet sleep. In the poetic imagination of the time, the fine dew of early evening was like a thin cotton cloth from Bengal, and woolen shawls of downy pashmina sent by the Mughal emperors to their trusted noblemen approximated the soft hand of the ruler on the vassal's shoulder. Textiles in seventeenth-century South Asia represented more than cloth to their makers and users. They simulated sensory experience, from natural, environmental conditions to intimate, personal touch. The Art of Cloth in Mughal India is the first art historical account of South Asian textiles from the early modern era. Author Sylvia Houghteling resurrects a truth that seventeenth-century world citizens knew, but which has been forgotten in the modern era: South Asian cloth ranked among the highest forms of art in the global hierarchy of luxury goods, and had a major impact on culture and communication. While studies abound in economic history about the global trade in Indian textiles that flourished from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, they rarely engage with the material itself and are less concerned with the artistic-and much less the literary and social-significance of the taste for cloth. This book is richly illustrated with images of textiles, garments, and paintings that are held in little-known collections and have rarely, if ever, been published. Rather than rely solely on records of European trading companies, Houghteling draws upon poetry in local languages and integrates archival research from unpublished royal Indian inventories to tell a new history of this material culture, one with a far more balanced view of its manufacture and use, as well as its purchase and trade"--

Book Synopsis

A richly illustrated history of textiles in the Mughal Empire

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a vast array of textiles circulated throughout the Mughal Empire. Made from rare fibers and crafted using virtuosic techniques, these exquisite objects animated early modern experience, from the intimate, sensory pleasure of garments to the monumentality of imperial tents. The Art of Cloth in Mughal India tells the story of textiles crafted and collected across South Asia and beyond, illuminating how cloth participated in political negotiations, social conversations, and the shared seasonal rhythms of the year.

Drawing on small-scale paintings, popular poetry, chronicle histories, and royal inventory records, Sylvia Houghteling charts the travels of textiles from the Mughal imperial court to the kingdoms of Rajasthan, the Deccan sultanates, and the British Isles. She shows how the "art of cloth" encompassed both the making of textiles as well as their creative uses. Houghteling asks what cloth made its wearers feel, how it acted in space, and what images and memories it conjured in the mind. She reveals how woven objects began to evoke the natural environment, convey political and personal meaning, and span the distance between faraway people and places.

Beautifully illustrated, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India offers an incomparable account of the aesthetics and techniques of cloth and cloth making and the ways that textiles shaped the social, political, religious, and aesthetic life of early modern South Asia.

Review Quotes

"Winner of the R.L. Shep Memorial Book Award, Textile Society of America"

"Houghteling compels us to rethink the history and historiography of textiles from the subcontinent through methodological forays that engage recent debates on global/local binaries, ecology and the environment, sensorial histories, artisanal practices, and commodity cultures, among other themes. . . . What emerges from this insightful study . . . is a dazzling social, cultural, political, and aesthetic history of textiles. Lavishly illustrated and exquisitely produced, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India will undoubtedly become a major landmark in the field of early modern art history."---Sugata Ray, West 86th

"Winner of the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award, College Art Association"

"[The Art of Cloth in Mughal India] maps a history of a specific art form while offering a multilayered methodological corrective to the field of art history. . . . [This book] is a crucial, multidisciplinary addition to the field that combines art and architectural history with explorations into comparative literature, botany, and the history of trade."---Murad Khan Mumtaz, caa.reviews

"Drawing on a superb range of material . . . Houghteling weaves a lively and comprehensive tale of the production, circulation and sensory experience of textiles during the age of the Great Mughals (155-1700). . . . A remarkable aesthetic sensitivity permeates her erudite research in this superb account of the lives and meanings of Mughal textiles."---Emily Hannam, World of Interiors

About the Author

Sylvia Houghteling is assistant professor of history of art at Bryn Mawr College.