Subtitled Ottoman Textiles between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, this comprehensive book by Amanda Phillips is devoted to Ottoman textiles and their trading history between the 1400s and the 1800s. One of the goals of the book is to show Ottoman textiles as represented in museum collections and to demonstrate that they were always part of world culture. In addition to Ottoman-Italian relations, which played an important part in Ottoman textile history, the book also discusses Ottoman relations with India, Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Eastern Europe.The book summarizes research in the field carried out in museums in recent years. It consists of three parts and topics are generally in chronological order. Of these, part 1 is devoted to “Technology, History and Terminology ca. 1200–1400” and “Weaving in Anatolia: International Styles and Local Production 1390–1500.” The first section discusses the Mediterranean in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, during which Franks, Byzantines, Arabs, Persians, Mongols, Armenians, and Turks lived in peace or at war, and lays out terminologies in use at the time. The second section starts with the marvelous wall hanging in Serbia’s Studenica Monastery made for Sultan Bayezid II. It shows in a single object the demands of a patron and how those demands collide with the limits of technology. This silk hanging is discussed here for the first time in a scholarly work. The second chapter of this part describes how the Ottoman state united around Istanbul as the new capital, and Italian silks and local fabrics found customers.Part 2 is also formed by two sections. The first is “Imperial Appetites and Shared Technologies in the Years 1500–1650.” Here the author discusses palace workshops and the style of the court. Italian silks are emphasized along with observations on how Syria and Egypt provided models for Ottoman textiles especially for religious use. Luxurious silk fabrics made for Christian communities are discussed as well. The second section is titled “Regulation and Contravention” and covers the years 1500–1700. This section explains how weavers and other silk workers contended unsuccessfully with regulations. Imperial edicts, court cases, and lists of fixed prices are written evidence of the standards imposed by authorities, but that the produced objects contradicted.Part 3 includes “Worlds of Goods: Consumption and Production 1550–1750” and “Emulation, Imitation and Novelty 1700–1800.” The first section discusses the amazing variety of goods made available for Ottoman subjects: silk and cotton blends from Syria, brocades from Yazd and Chios, calicos from India and Anatolia, mohair from Ankara, printed and painted cotton from Egypt and Tokat. It also considers woolens from Salonica, important for the Macedonian economy, and migrant artists from Iberia. The second section discusses a new type of fabric, silk and cotton blends with brilliantly colored floral motifs on white and pastel grounds, which replaced the crimson and gold styles of past centuries. Sultans and ministers had founded workshops to produce high-quality products similar to European versions. Weavers outside Istanbul had shifted their production on their own terms. Patterned woolens from Kashmir and sashes from South Asia and Persia also took their place in the market. Whether imported or local, these new types of textiles were also described in the poetry of the time and were sometimes censured by authorities. Although the textile sector in the eighteenth-century Islamic world has been mischaracterized as derivative and decadent, this chapter shows that textiles were quite vibrant and innovative.The author is an art historian and uses articles by prominent Turkish scholars such as Halil Inalcık, Mübahat Kütükoğlu, Fahri Dalsar, and Hülya Tezcan, who have long studied Ottoman textiles and their history. Phillips is highly professional in her presentation of the results of her research. However, with regard to Ottoman textiles and Turkish researchers working in this field, there is a strange comment in the book: “Ottoman textiles cannot be rescued from obscurity with breathless encomia, most simply cannot live up to the extravagant adjectives employed by aesthetes. Instead, their study must discuss inconsistencies, mistakes and purposeful mediocrities and aim to understand these features and the agency they imply. I argue for the place of craft and material culture and for noncanonical objects in larger art historical discussions from which they are too often excluded.” Indeed, that point can be agreed on. Phillips is of the opinion that a more nuanced study and new methodologies can help expand paths for the study of Islamic and Ottoman art, which has long focused on the court and elite patrons.She discusses the Ottoman textile/weaving industry along with samples from the foremost textile collections of the world, such as those in Istanbul’s Topkapı Palace, London’s Albert and Victoria Museum, Washington’s Textile Museum, and Lisbon’s Museo Calouste Gulbenkian, and includes technical analyses.According to Phillips, in contrast to the written record, an object’s physical nature is the best, and sometimes the only, evidence for its production. Formal and technical analysis of extant objects also informs a larger discussion about economics, trade, and social life in the Ottoman Empire. She states that the object itself is the primary source, and the book discusses this topic well and in detail.Phillips takes a step back to bring forth a bigger picture, allowing the reader to consider larger patterns of circulation throughout the empire. Different textile products interacted with each other in both production and consumption. For instance, there were more than a thousand mohair looms in Ankara, and some of the finished cloth was more expensive than silk. There was no imported equivalent of these. In the late seventeenth century, Bursa had developed lightweight mixed silk-cotton fabric that competed with popular new styles from India. When demand for cashmere shawls increased in the eighteenth century, new opportunities opened for skilled artisans who worked with other materials.Some of the book’s topics are familiar to experts in Ottoman studies, such as artisans and their relationship with authorities, central regulation and its discontents, imports from and exports to Persia, Italy, and India, and the purchasing habits of sultans and notables. Those who are familiar with Ottoman silks will come across the stripes-and-dots velvets associated with Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444–46 / 1451–81) and the court style of Sultan Suleyman I (r. 1520–66).The author draws attention to textiles that remain untouched in monasteries, private collections, and museum repositories, waiting to be considered and perhaps to shift ideas about the many facets of Ottoman textiles. This is a guide for Ottoman textile researchers.The book mainly discusses patterned silk fabrics woven on large looms since these survived best and during their own time attracted regulation from authorities, generating more written resources than other fabrics.This book will be helpful to the general public interested in Ottoman textiles, rather than to a reader specialized in the subject. It is an important publication that covers the sources, development, and interactions of Ottoman textiles in a geography extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, and their contribution to the economic and social life of the empire.