The power of textile items born of need, wrought by anonymous hands, and worn over generations.

In times when cloth was much more precious, people in rural Japan thriftily stitched together scraps of fabric to make everything from garments to bedding. Although the practice no longer exists, the articles left behind have come to be celebrated as works of art and of textile—so much so, in fact, that today they are known around the world simply by their Japanese name, boro. This book selects 500-plus examples of boro out of the more than 1,000 that the author has collected over thirty-five years. Wrap yourself in a compelling world of beauty shaped unconsciously by scores of unknown hands.