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Spitalfields Dress Brocade
1745-50

Beautiful. Imagine the dress!

Description

woven with five different flower sprays emerging from behind fences or a Rococo shell motif, all in clear shades of cerise, pink, aubergine, yellow, black, green and blue, on a fine twill weave ivory ground, 38 x 21 in or 97 x 53 cm wide.

Condition

Very crisp and fresh looking. One large stain to the second flower from the bottom, 7 x 7 1/2 in or 18 x 19 cm.

Comments

There are linen threads to the selvedges where the skirt was unpicked which is rather nice. The original full repeat was 42 inches or1.07 m in length

Thanks to Clare Browne, Textiles Curator, V& A. for looking at this piece for me.  She suggests: Anna Marie Garthwaite has several designs from around 1747/8 which have similar symetrical sprigs, often marshalled into self coloured cartouches.

See: Natalie Rothstein's Catalogue of Silk Designs plates 244 and 256 and page 233.

See: Natalie Rothstein Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century, In the Collection of the V&A Museum p.238, designs by Anna Maria Garthwaite c.1749 – similar pattern filling space between stems