Silk and Purple (Greek language text)

This edited collection opens a window into the world of Byzantine and post-Byzantine textiles by exploring the different traditions that developed in the Eastern Mediterranean from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern era. The book’s editors and contributors have created a complex scientific canvas, based on their complementary interests and expertise. The book, which aspires to fill a significant void in Greek literature, is characterized by this spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration; it offers an overview of the most important local textile products, together with the Eastern and Western imports that used to reach the busy markets of Byzantium and Ottoman Greece. The aim is to showcase this important, yet still obscure, facet of material culture. Within this frame, its chapters discover different aspects of economic, social, religious and artistic history; most of them interwoven in the study of textiles, much like a loom’s warp and weft for the production of elaborate designs.