A Woven Life

Book excerpt: Richly layered and remarkably candid, this is anything but an ordinary memoir. Life-writing at its truthful and unapologetic best, here is a story of a textile historian, entrepreneur and collector with an eventful and adventurous life story. As a child in countryside England, Jenny had thought she would grow up to be a spy, but life had other plans. Brought to the world of Asian textiles, art and museums, she has over the last five decades travelled across Asia with a passion to document traditional, local, and nomadic weaves and handcrafted textiles. She lays bare her idyllic childhood in the aftermath of the Second World War; her aspirations of being in the arts and then as a researcher at the Victoria and Albert museum in London; the struggles of falling in and out of love and a broken marriage; of parenting; and her passion for Indian textiles, having established herself as one of the most successful British entrepreneurs working in India who co-founded the luxury brands shades of India and kashmir loom.