Professor Anna Muthesius is a leading specialist on Byzantine silks. This book brings together the most important of her papers published over 20 years on Byzantine and related silks from 400 to 1200 AD. Some of the papers and plates are currently only available in this book. All items have been amended or annotated as necessary in the light of current knowledge. The figures have been re-drawn especially for this volume, and the text has been reset to an appropriate standard.

The articles deal with the economic, political, social, religious, artistic and cultural aspects of mediæval silk production, distribution and use. They illustrate the tremendous impact of Byzantine silk weaving on the Islamic Mediterranean and Near East, and on the Latin West before 1200 AD. The volume contains the research results of a working lifetime, in a form not otherwise obtainable.

Anna Muthesius was elected to the first chair in textile studies in Great Britain in 1997, and taught both at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design and in the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, founding Fellow of the International Association for the Study of Silk Road Textiles and also of the Textile Study Group of Great Britain. She has published texts on Byzantine, Islamic, Near and Far Eastern silk weaving (4-15 centuries).