Philadelphia Museum Of Art Costumes Collection

Exquisite and labor-intensive, phulkari (“floral-work” or “flower-craft”) embroideries were originally produced by women in towns and villages across the greater Punjab, a region that today straddles Pakistan and India, from at least the early 19th century into the first decades of the 20th. Phulkaris were made from brightly colored silk thread on rough, earth-toned fabric. When done for domestic use, they functioned primarily as women’s wraps at weddings or other important events. Esp... [Read More]

Published to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Philadelphia Museum of Art craft show, Crafting a Legacy showcases the Museum's burgeoning collection of contemporary American crafts. More than one hundred color plates illustrate many of the Museum's prime holdings in ceramics, wood, fiber, glass, metal, and furniture. Entries on sixty-four featured artists, including Dale Chihuly, Wharton Esherick, Sheila Hicks, and Peter Voulkos, place their work in the context of the dynamic field of Ame... [Read More]

One of the most admired women in the world, Grace Kelly (1929–1982) is remembered for her beauty, poise, and style. Her “fairy-tale” wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956 was one of the most celebrated of the century. To commemorate its 50th anniversary, this lovely book tells the story behind her wedding gown, cap, veil, shoes, and prayer book—all given by the new princess to the Philadelphia Museum of Art shortly after the ceremony. Philadelphia-born Grace Kelly rocketed to Hollywo... [Read More]

Nearly four hundred textiles from East and West are reproduced in full color in this handbook of the Philadelphia Museum of Art's encyclopedic collections, which cover a broad range of geographic areas, periods, and techniques.Each chapter is introduced by a brief history of that particular aspect of the museum's collections, placing it within the context of textile scholarship and collecting in the United States and Europe.

This first book-length study on kanthas published outside of South Asia focuses on two premier collections, one assembled by the legendary historian of Indian art, Dr. Stella Kramrisch, the other by Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz, leading proponents of self-taught art. Created from worn-out garments imaginatively embroidered by women with motifs and tales drawn from a rich regional repertoire, kanthas traditionally were stitched as gifts for births, weddings, and other family occasions. Innovative e... [Read More]

Exploring the origins and lasting significance of a dynamic, subversive, and interactive art form This is the first publication to consider art to wear, also known as wearable art, as a discrete American movement that mirrored the cultural, political, social, and spiritual concerns of a generation that came of age in the late 1960s and 1970s. Trained primarily in the fine arts, they adopted nontraditional forms, materials, and techniques to create works using the body as an armature. Collectivel... [Read More]

A dazzling tour of selected highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's collection of fashionable dresses beginning with several masterpieces by the father of haute couture, Charles Frederick Worth, most of which were made for and owned (or yearned after) by American women.The first garments collected by the museum after its founding in 1876 provided early costume historians with a rich resource for the study of historic American dress, and with the opening of the first costume galleries un... [Read More]