A couple weeks ago, I mentioned an exhibition that’s running at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, called Interwoven Globe: The World Textile Trade 1500-1800.

Whenever a major museum publicizes a major exhibit having to do with textiles, one of the first things I do is ferret out the exhibition catalogue.

An exhibition catalogue is the list (and usually provenance and detailed description) of the items on show in the exhibition. When a museum as large as the Met puts on an exhibition, their catalogues are usually a bit more than that. They usually include essays of scholarly research, supported by images of art and artifacts, extensive annotation, and the like, resulting in magnificent coffee-table quality books that appeal visually and intellectually to enthusiasts of the subject.

If it’s something I know will appeal to me, I invest in the exhibition catalogue right away, because usually, the catalogues are not reprinted and once they’re gone, they’re gone. (The exhibition catalogue for ‘Twixt Art & Nature comes to mind…)

The exhibition catalog for Interwoven Globe another exceptional volume, a fantastic book for anyone interested in the history of all varieties of textiles. Today, I’ll take you through it, so you can decide if you want to invest in it, too.