This is the catalog accompanying an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art which focuses on food-related art from the Islamic world from the eighth through nineteenth centuries. The book presents works in a wide variety of media, most commonly decorative tableware, but also including paintings, tapestries, manuscript pages and illustrations, and even napkins and robes for dining. In addition to descriptions of more than 250 pieces, there are essays from a wide variety of scholarly specialists, as well as excerpts from period writing, all of which combine to depict evolutions in taste and emphasis across a region spanning from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Mughal states of India. Certain essays provide contrasts with contemporary practices in Europe and China to reveal wider context. Impressively broad and informative. Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.
