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Furnishing fabric
Unknown - Enlarge image
Furnishing fabric
- Place of origin:
Lancashire, England (printed)
- Date:
ca. 1805 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Cotton, block-printed, with pencilled (painted) blue
- Credit Line:
Given by the Calico Printers' Association
- Museum number:
CIRC.221-1956
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 118a, case 7
Object Type
For the first 20 years of the 19th century the finest and most expensive printed furnishings were polychrome woodblock-printed cottons, the technique used here. This fabric might have been used for curtains or upholstery. In this period it was particularly fashionable for the different furnishings used in a room, including window curtains and upholstery fabric, to match or complement each other.
Place
Most of the leading printworks in the London area had closed down by the beginning of the 19th century, and the centre of the textiles printing industry had shifted to Lancashire and to Carlisle in Cumbria. This example is extremely close to original designs printed at the Bannister Hall works for Bateman & Todd, a leading firm of Manchester merchants, and it may have been commissioned by them from another printer.
