Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability

Looms and Textiles of the Copts.
Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences, No. 11.
Carroll, Diane Lee. 1988.

While textiles rarely survive in the archaeological record, the dry desert tombs of Egypt have preserved large numbers from multiple eras. Yet despite a plethora of samples, the Coptic period of Egypt (the first millennium of the Christian era) is often overlooked in favor of the more studied periods of the ancient pharaohs and the Arab conquest.

In the mid-1900s, San Francisco Bay Area industrialist Carl Austin Rietz collected over 75 Coptic textile fragments, a collection which now resides at the California Academy of Sciences. In Looms and Textiles of the Copts, Diane Lee Carroll discusses the history, manufacturing techniques and motifs of Coptic-era textiles, using the Rietz collection as her study group.

201 pages, 16 color plates, 98 black & white photographs. Soft cover $30.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter I. The Coptic Weaver's Inheritance: Ancient Textile Technology

Chapter II. Coptic Textile Technology: The Literary and Archaeological Evidence

Chapter III. Coptic Textile Design: The Greek and Roman Sources

Chapter IV. Coptic Motifs: Some Philosophical Concepts

Chapter V. Significant Dates: The Historical Background

Chapter VI. The Rietz Coptic Textiles: An Illustrated Catalog

Chapter VII. Glossary

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