Material Choices

Asia is renowned for the production of fine hand-woven cottons and luxurious silks - important items of trade for centuries. In addition to these celebrated fabrics, however, weavers throughout the region produced cloth from ramie, hemp, pi-a, and banana fibres (including Philippine abaca and Okinawan ito bash'), as well as a number of lesser-known plant fibres. Over the course of the twentieth century, many of these Asian plant fibre weaving traditions became marginalized or hovered on the brink of extinction, given the advent of synthetic fabrics, growing industrialization, and increased international textile trade. As the essays in this book testify, however, they have not vanished altogether. Rather, in recent times weavers have purposefully chosen to pursue various efforts directed at their preservation, revival, or reinvention. In many cases, the production of bast and leaf fibre textiles is now thriving in newly globalized situations. This volume presents eight essays documenting the current state of bast and leaf fibre weaving traditions in Vietnam, Borneo, Korea, Burma, Okinawa, the Philippines, Japan, and Micronesia. The processes that have nurtured or buffeted attempts to preserve or revive the production of these textiles are examined and abundantly illustrated with colour photographs. Roy W. Hamilton is curator of Asian and Pacific collections at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. B. Lynne Milgram is professor of anthropology at Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto. The other contributors include Sylvia Fraser-Lu, Bu-ja Koh, Sophiano Limol, Elizabeth Oley, Melisssa M. Rinne, Donald H. Rubinstein, Amanda Mayer Stinchecum, Ma Thanegi, and Tran Thi Thu Thuy.