Chinese Silks / Edited by Dieter Kuhn ; Chinese edition edited by Zhao Feng ; Foreword by James C.Y. Watt ; Contributions by Chen Juanjuan, Huang Nengfu, Dieter Kuhn, Li Wenying, Peng Hao, Zhao Feng ; Translations by David Andrew Knight, Craig Shaw, Nicholas Morrow Williams.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 531-534) and index.

Reading the Magnificence of Ancient and Medieval Chinese Silks - Fashionable Weaves and Ingenious Craftsmanship / Dieter Kuhn -- The Origins of Sericulture and Silk Weaving-From Antiquity to the Zhou Dynasty / Peng Hao -- Silk Artistry of the Qin, Han, Wei, and Jin Dynasties / Li Wenying -- Silk Artistry of the Northern and Southern Dynasties / Li Wenying -- Silk in the Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties / Zhao Feng -- Silk in the Song, Liao, Xi Xia, and Jin Dynasties / Zhao Feng -- Divergent Styles of North and South-Silk Artistry of the Yuan Dynasty / Zhao Feng -- The Path to Refinement: Silk Fabrics of the Ming Dynasty -- Huang Nengfu & Chen Juanjuan -- Textile Art of the Qing Dynasty -- Chen Juanjuan & Huang Nengfu.

Over the past fifty years, archaeological explorations in China have unearthed a wealth of textile materials, some dating as far back as five thousand years. In this magnificently researched and illustrated book, preeminent Chinese and Western scholars draw upon these spectacular discoveries to provide the most thorough account of the history of silk ever written. Encyclopaedic in breadth, the volume presents a chronological history of silk from a variety of perspectives, including the archaeological, technological, art historical, and aesthetic. The authors explore the range of uses for silk, from the everyday to the sublime. By directly connecting recently found textile artefacts to specific references in China's vast historical literature, they illuminate the evolution of silk making and the driving social forces that have inspired the creation of innovative textiles through the millennia.