In addition to pepper, De Romanis says, exports included both local products – ivory, pearls, spices such as malabathron – and those from other parts of India, including semi-precious stones, silks and the aromatic root nard.
In the show's final gallery, Luciano Fabro's enormous birds' feet, made of carved-stone and silk, might almost be by Ettore Sottsass or Gaetano Pesce.
Working with the interior designer Lilly Reich, Mies specified all of the furniture and furnishings in opulent woods, stones, velvets, silks and leathers.
In "The Living Room" he arranged his collection of uncarved Chinese seal stones, an old silk Chinese robe, a book in Chinese on kites, and a photograph of his grandmother's medical school class in China in the 1920's.
For more refined couplings of beads and bows, Simon Alcantara offers short or long necklaces, top and right, made of stones and iridescent silk ribbon, as well as jawbreaker-size white or black porcelain beads knotted together with velvet and ribbons ($300 to $7,000 at Bergdorf Goodman).
At a Cannes auction in May 2008 to benefit amfAR, a custom-tailored Chopard by Alberta Ferretti dress, with 2.904 carats of Chopard precious stones on lilac silk chiffon, was sold for $486,000.
But also among the search results were how-to articles like one saying that if I sipped tea brewed from ground celery seeds or corn silk, the stone would pass within hours.
In Yangshao culture, millet was cultivated, some animals were domesticated, chipped and polished stone tools were used, silk was produced, and pottery was fired in kilns dug into the ground.
Digital images can be reproduced on canvas, paper, wood, acrylic, silk and stone and typically take up to three days to be ready for shipping.
She is striking in the dim light cast from the bar, dressed in purple velour, silk and stones.
