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Textile
Unknown - Enlarge image
Textile
- Place of origin:
Dhaka, Bangladesh (made)
- Date:
1855 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Embroidered muslin
- Museum number:
0214(IS)
- Gallery location:
In Storage
Dhaka, today the capital of Bangladesh, was traditionally known as a centre for weaving fine cotton muslin fabrics, and also for embroidering them. While there was a huge market for muslin in India and the Middle East, from the late 18th century it also became very popular in Britain and France for women’s dress. This delicately embroidered length of muslin would have been used to make one of the elegant ‘empire-line’ dresses fashionable in Britain at that time. Simple white cotton dresses would have been worn with equally fashionable Kashmir shawls to complete the softer style of draped costume that was the height of fashion in western Europe in the early years of the 19th century.
