Dress Fabric thumbnail 1
Not currently on display at the V&A

Dress Fabric

1748 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Dress fabric of brocaded silk. Woven with a cream taffeta ground and a brocaded floral design. A green branch with flowers and fruit in crimson, brown, blue and other coloured silks are displayed on an open ground. There is a small self-coloured quatrefoil motif in the background. The repeat of the design takes up the full width of the panel. The selvedge consists of one outer cord and a plain tabby strip 0.19 inch wide.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Materials and techniques
Brocaded silk
Brief description
Dress fabric of brocaded silk, designed by Anna Maria Garthwaite, Spitalfields, London, 1748
Physical description
Dress fabric of brocaded silk. Woven with a cream taffeta ground and a brocaded floral design. A green branch with flowers and fruit in crimson, brown, blue and other coloured silks are displayed on an open ground. There is a small self-coloured quatrefoil motif in the background. The repeat of the design takes up the full width of the panel. The selvedge consists of one outer cord and a plain tabby strip 0.19 inch wide.
Dimensions
  • Repeat length: 27.75in
  • Length: 69in
  • Width: 19in
Credit line
Given by the Silk and Rayon Users Association
Object history
Designed by Anna Maria Garthwaite in 1748 and woven by Mr Brant, whose name appears on the design, together with the date of October 1948. Mr Brant was probably Thomas Brant, a typical silk manufacturer in Spitalfields and a liveryman of the Weavers Company; son of a silk weaver, James Brant, to whom he was apprenticed in 1726, and brother of a silk throwster.

The silk was acquired by Messrs Arditti & Mayorcas in Spain and gifted to the V&A by the Silk and Rayon Users Association in 1961. RP 61/2917.
Production
Design 5986.8
Bibliographic reference
N.K.Rothstein, Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Thames and Hudson, 1990, pl. 250, p. 210. The design is illustrated in pl. 252. British Textile Design in the Victoria and Albert Museum, ed. Donald King, Tokyo, 1980, Vol. I, colour plate 208. Exhibited and published in Designs for British Dress and Furnishing Fabrics, 18th century to present, V&A, 1986.
Collection
Accession number
T.177-1961

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Record createdJune 24, 2009
Record URL
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