Second Lives: the Age-Old Art of Recycling Textiles August 20, 2011

This exhibition will highlight the ways people in various cultures ingeniously have repurposed worn but precious fabrics to create beautiful new textile forms. Examples include a rare sutra cover made from a 15th-century Chinese rank badge, a vest fashioned from a Pacific Northwest coast Chilkat blanket, and a large patchwork hanging from Central Asia stitched together from small scraps of silk ikat and other fabrics. Also featured are a pictorial kantha from India embroidered with threads recycled from old saris, a coat from 19th-century Japan painstakingly woven from rags, and other recycled textiles.