Threads of Empire by Dorothy Armstrong Book Review

About the Book:

Dorothy Armstrong’s Threads of Empire is a spellbinding look at the history of the world through the stories of twelve carpets. Beautiful, sensuous, and enigmatic, great carpets follow power. Emperors, shahs, sultans and samurai crave them as symbols of earthly domination. Shamans and priests desire them to evoke the spiritual realm. The world’s 1% hunger after them as displays of extreme status. And yet these seductive objects are made by poor and illiterate weavers, using the most basic materials and crafts; hedgerow plants for dyes, fibers from domestic animals, and the millennia-old skills of interweaving warps, wefts and knots.

In Threads of Empire, Armstrong tells the histories of some of the world’s most fascinating carpets, exploring how these textiles came into being then were transformed as they moved across geography and time in the slipstream of the great. She shows why the world’s powerful were drawn to them, but also asks what was happening in the weavers’ lives, and how they were affected by events in the world outside their tent, village or workshop. In its wide-ranging examination of these dazzling objects, from the 5th century BCE contents of the tombs of Scythian chieftains, to the carpets under the boots of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the 1945 Yalta Peace Conference, Threads of Empire uncovers a new, hitherto hidden past right beneath our feet.

My Review:

Well crafted rugs tell stories. Armstrong, with her love of the subject, did a fine job telling those stories. Quilts frequently get the attention for historical works like this and I was glad to see a different focus. I like how she combined the historical setting of the carpet's creation as well as the history of the carpet itself. I was surprised at the labor, of children or slaves, unlike quilt origins. I was not as interested in the actual materials used in the carpets and found that information not as interesting. Her writing style did make the information less dry, however.

This book did give me a new appreciation for what one can reveal about culture through creations such as carpets. It is a book for readers who would like to look at the world through the often overlooked topic of carpet construction and trade.

My rating: 4/5 stars.

About the Author:

Dr. Dorothy Armstrong is a historian of the material culture of South, Central and West Asia, and for the last decade has tried to penetrate the mysteries of Asian rugs. She has published, podcast and lectured widely on carpets. She was tutor at the Royal College of Art and Edinburgh College of Art, and from 2021 has been the Beattie Fellow in Carpet Studies at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. She is an avid collector of carpets and is as a result also an expert on clothes moths. Photo Credit: Toby Long, PhotoExpress, Edinburgh.

St Martin's Press, 368 pages.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent review.

(My star ratings: 5-I love it, 4-I like it, 3-It's OK, 2-I don't like it, 1-I hate it.)