African Apparel: Threaded Transformations Across the 20th Century - Softcover

Moon PhD, Ryan MacKenzie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1785512633 ISBN 13: 9781785512636

Publisher: Scala, 2020

Synopsis

Featuring African textiles, clothing, headwear, and jewellery, this book celebrates African dress as a product of global interactions, generational conflict and continuity, and expressions of gender. Featuring African textiles, clothing, headwear, and jewellery, this book celebrates African dress as a product of global interactions, generational conflict and continuity, and expressions of gender. The book highlights the strength and resilience of long-standing practices that characterise African dress; the wide variety of cultural, religious, and political motivations for adorning oneself; and the varying identities reflected in analysing African material culture of the last century and a half. Textile selections include hand-woven and dyed examples alongside factory-woven and machine-printed cloth. Items of adornment include amber and silver jewellery from North Africa, beadwork-embellished clothing from South Africa, and various headdresses from across the continent, to name a few examples. From formal European colonisation, to independence for African countries, to the liberalisation of African economies, this book will demonstrate how dress practices reveal personal and group identities, cultural traditions, religious associations, political affiliations, and aspirations.

About this title

About the Author

MacKenzie Moon Ryan is Assistant Professor of Art History at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. Ryan specializes in the history of African art, with particular interest in textiles, fashion, trade, colonialism, cross-cultural exchange, and museum studies. She serves on the editorial board for the scholarly journal African Arts.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scala
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 1785512633
• ISBN 13: 9781785512636
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 112