Rose pompom
Dress Fabric
1953 (made)
1953 (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
This textile (extreme left) is from the archive of Zika Ascher, an innovative textile manufacturer who based himself in London after the annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1939. His wife designed textiles and their company became incorporated in 1942 (Ascher Ltd). Ascher developed a range of different fabrics for use at the top end of the fashion market. He used samples such as this one to show prospective clients his wares, and as a record of his output.
This design was called 'Rose Pompom' by Ascher and featured in the haute couture collections in Spring/Summer 1953, when Dior made it into a dance ensemble. The extremely fine silk was woven in Macclesfield originally to insulate electrical wiring, and it was Ascher's idea to print on it. This was the first attempt. It was printed in three colourways: red/pink, lemon/yellow and blue on a white ground. Princess Margaret had a dress made of it and wore it in public on a Caribbean visit later in the 1950s.
This design was called 'Rose Pompom' by Ascher and featured in the haute couture collections in Spring/Summer 1953, when Dior made it into a dance ensemble. The extremely fine silk was woven in Macclesfield originally to insulate electrical wiring, and it was Ascher's idea to print on it. This was the first attempt. It was printed in three colourways: red/pink, lemon/yellow and blue on a white ground. Princess Margaret had a dress made of it and wore it in public on a Caribbean visit later in the 1950s.
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Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Rose pompom (manufacturer's title) |
| Materials and techniques | Woven silk organza and screen-printed |
| Brief description | Dress fabric 'Rose pompom' sample of screen-printed silk organza, retailed by Ascher Ltd., Great Britain, 1953 |
| Physical description | Dress fabric sample cut by the use of pinking shears (i.e. they have a zig-zag edge all round). A small rose adapted from a nineteenth century woodblock and screen-printed onto silk. Three colours used in the composition of the design which is printed on an off-white ground. |
| Credit line | Given by Zika Ascher |
| Object history | One of three samples of the same pattern in different colourways and on different base fabrics T.182 to B-1988. This object was donated to the museum along with the Ascher archive in 1988. |
| Historical context | This design was called 'Rose Pompom' by Ascher and featured in the haute couture collections in Spring/Summer 1953, when Dior made it into a dance ensemble. The extremely fine silk was woven in Macclesfield originally to insulate electrical wiring, and it was Ascher's idea to print on it. This was the first attempt. It was printed in three colourways: red/pink, lemon/yellow and blue on a white ground. Princess Margaret had a dress of it and wore it in public on a Caribbean visit later in the 1950s. A sample of the blue version of the fabric survives in the Musée de la Mode et du Textile in Paris. The red version of this silk was used by Christian Dior in his Spring/Summer collections in 1953. |
| Production | Illustrated in British Vogue in a Christian Dior dress, May 1953 |
| Summary | This textile (extreme left) is from the archive of Zika Ascher, an innovative textile manufacturer who based himself in London after the annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1939. His wife designed textiles and their company became incorporated in 1942 (Ascher Ltd). Ascher developed a range of different fabrics for use at the top end of the fashion market. He used samples such as this one to show prospective clients his wares, and as a record of his output. This design was called 'Rose Pompom' by Ascher and featured in the haute couture collections in Spring/Summer 1953, when Dior made it into a dance ensemble. The extremely fine silk was woven in Macclesfield originally to insulate electrical wiring, and it was Ascher's idea to print on it. This was the first attempt. It was printed in three colourways: red/pink, lemon/yellow and blue on a white ground. Princess Margaret had a dress made of it and wore it in public on a Caribbean visit later in the 1950s. |
| Bibliographic reference | Mendes, Valerie. Ascher. Fabric, Art, Fashion. London: V&A Publications, 1987, pp. 162-3.
|
| Collection | |
| Accession number | T.182A-1988 |
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| Record created | March 25, 2011 |
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