Winner of the R. L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Award sponsored by the Textile Society of America

Asia is renowned for the production of fine handwoven 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, pina, and banana fibers (including Philippine abaca and Okinawan ito basho), as well as a number of lesser-known plant fibers. Over the course of the twentieth century, many of these Asian plant fiber weaving traditions became marginalized or hovered on the...

Weaver's Stories from Island Southeast Asia delves into the personal stories of individual textile artists, bringing recognition to their accomplishments, skills, and extraordinary lives. Photographs of ten women from eight locations in the Southeast Asian archipelago along with examples of their weaving are accompanied by a DVD showing them at work.

The book is part of a project to bring stories from the lives of Southeast Asian weavers and batik makers to an American audience, using video as the main component. Although the makers of textiles are generally not named in...