Threads of identity : preserving Palestinian costume and heritage / Widad Kamel Kawar.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Story of the collection -- Reconstructing a disappearing heritage -- Palestinian costumes, Palestinian lives -- Ramallah -- Jericho -- Hebron -- Bethlehem -- Jerusalem -- Jaffa -- Ramla and Lydda -- Galilee -- Nablus -- Gaza -- Southern Palestine -- The new dress : born of camp life and resistance -- Tying the threads.

One of the leading authorities on Palestinian costume, Widad Kamel Kawar takes a unique approach to the topic in her latest book, Threads of Identity. While this handsomely-illustrated, 449-page volume offers a beautifully photographed compendium of rarely seen examples of Palestinian garments and jewelry, Kawar{u2018}s interviews with the women who made them elevates this book into a valuable history of Palestine as seen by those who lived it. Born in the Nablus area of the West Bank, Kawar studied in Jerusalem and Ramallah, and later attended university in Beirut. Upon her marriage, she moved to Amman, Jordan, and began to systematize a collection of textiles and jewelry begun while she was still in college. Upon returning to Bethlehem in 1950, witnessing the drastic changes taking place after the Israeli occupation compelled her to start collecting traditional costumes as a way of "preserving the world as I knew it." Today the Widad Kawar Collection comprises more than 3,000 examples of traditional Palestinian, Jordanian and Arab dress and accessories. Illustrated with part of this collection, the book details with some precision the traditional embroidery styles, but its purpose is less to be a scholarly compilation of textile design, than to link those designs to the history of Palestine.