Steppeflower

One of the achievements of contemporary designers has been the integration of historic and ethnographic aesthetics with modern technology. Coloring individual threads with a specific design and then weaving them together to create a patterned cloth (ikat) is a very labor-intensive technique developed over a thousand years ago in Asia. The process was mechanized by Europeans in the last century but remains a complicated procedure which only recently has been used to create contemporary designs. This fabric, with its distinctive 1980s coloration, incorporates the blurred edges, chintz finish, and some design elements of the spectacular ikats produced in Central Asia during the last century.