1001 Things to Spot Long Ago

What makes the colors and designs of Guatemalan textiles so gripping that they fascinate people from all over the world? Is there any connection between what foreigners love and the meaning of these textiles for the women who make them? This book, based on a comprehensive study of hundreds of textiles, analyzes them with the care and detail that art critics give to paintings and sculpture that also have nearly universal appeal. The analysis zeroes in on the way the play of colors generates space. In order to allow the Maya to speak in their own terms about space, the book summarizes folktales from each of the ethnic-linguistic groups from which come the textiles. All of these stories juxtapose different kinds of space the space of everyday human activity, the space of heroic action, the space of the gods demands, the space in which talking animals go about their business. These spaces and the way they are joined or juxtaposed with those in the textiles are compared to those in the textiles.