Tasar silk chair cover embroidered with tasar silk floss, silk ground woven in India, embroidery worked by the Leek Embroidery Society, Leek, Staffordshire, 1879.

Chair cover, the front embroidered all over with coloured floss silks, probably following the printed design of Thomas Wardle's 'Mooltan Mayblossom', which can be seen beneath the borders. The borders are embroidered with scrolling plants, in which the flower heads have metal studs attached to the centres, and are edged with lines of gold-wrapped thread. The back is unbleached tussar silk, printed with a floral design by Thomas Wardle in yellow ochre. Gold-coloured silk fringes.

The preface to Thomas Wardle's Handbook of the Collection Illustrative of the Wild Silks of India (1881) states that "The Lords of the Committee of the Council on Education think it desirable to direct public attention to the Collection illustrative of the Wild Silks of India which forms part of the Indian Section added to the South Kensington Museum in December 1879." This piece and two others attributed to the Leek School of Embroidery appear in Wardle's catalogue of this collection his Handbook, and all three pieces have India Museum catalogue numbers, indicating that they were indeed part of the collection of Indian material transferred from the India Museum to the South Kensington Museum in December 1879. As the Leek School of Embroidery was itself established in 1879, the embroideries must have been made sometime in that same year. On 20 December 1880, all three pieces were transferred to the South Kensington Museum's Animal Products section, as indicated by the labels affixed to their backs. At some point they were transferred back to the Indian section, likely when the Animal Products section was dissolved in the 1920s.

4554(IS)