Chinese Patchwork

Patchwork design has a long history in China, dating back almost two thousand years to the arrival of Buddhism in the region. Across millennia, a thread can be followed from spiritual practitioners embracing patchwork textiles as a visual expression of their beliefs to patchwork's use in secular culture, where it was prized for its protective powers. Eventually, patchwork became a form of domestic decoration—and an outlet for artistic ingenuity—that continues in some areas of China's countryside today.
Chinese Patchwork explores the creativity of 20th- and 21st-century Chinese makers who stitch fabric remnants into functional, decorative and auspicious articles for use in their homes and by their families. These objects display a wide variety of designs, patterns and techniques, and reflect both local tendencies and the individual aesthetics of the makers. Through a series of scholarly essays, museum curator Nancy Berliner illuminates the tradition and history behind the art form, as well as its links to Chinese visual culture; these texts are illustrated by stunning reproductions of lively and colorful patchwork examples. Interviews with contemporary makers offer readers firsthand insight into the practice and its intricacies. Additional photographs of the artists, their families and their works in situ by American photographer Lois Conner beautifully illustrate patchwork's bold visual presence in rural China.

By Nancy Berliner. Photographs by Lois Conner.

Publisher: MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Format: Hardcover, 9 x 11 in. / 240 pgs / 120 color.
ISBN 9780878469079

Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. is America’s premier source for books on twentieth and twenty-first century art, photography, design and aesthetic culture. Founded in 1990 in downtown New York at a time when fine and sometimes esoteric international art books had a difficult time making their way into the wider American marketplace, over the past three decades D.A.P. has grown into a major international distributor of books, special editions and rare publications from an array of the world’s most respected publishers, museums and cultural institutions.

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