Adventures in Textiles

We have a great travel guide recommendation for visitors to our site. Cynthia LeCount Samaké has written A Textile Traveler’s Guide to Peru and Bolivia, which highlights everything a dedicated textile enthusiast needs to explore the two countries.

The book is filled with fascinating information on Bolivian and Peruvian textiles and beautiful photography including two of our images from the Colca Canyon region. In fact, the first full-page photograph in the book is our image below of a woman wearing an intricately embroidered hat and collar.

While we often license photographs and video footage, we wanted to take a moment to point out this particular book because – well – we really like it. It provides a ton of information on textile manufacturing and textile markets, distinguishing dyes and materials, and differentiating between hand-made and factory-made fabrics.

Honestly, we really could have used this book during the six months that we were in the region. We love fabrics and textile art. For example, we just randomly happened across the Watiti dancers in Chivay featured in our second image. Of course, Cynthia lists the Chivay Watiti dances in December in her book. If only we had known about all the other amazing Peruvian festivals and celebrations she includes in her guide.

In addition to her book, Cynthia also leads specialized tours to some of the world’s best destinations for textile fans. So if you are the kind of person who would love to learn about batik printing in Ghana, shop for ikat fabrics directly from weavers in Uzbekistan or take part in an Indian shisha mirror embroidery workshop, then head over to her site and check out some of her upcoming textile tours. They just sound amazing!

If you can’t get enough of gorgeous textiles, we recommend you also check out our pictorial on the Flower Hmong.