Design for woven silk from the 'Leman Album', pencil, pen and ink, watercolour and bodycolour on laid paper, by James Leman, Spitalfields, 1709

Design for woven silk from the 'Leman Album', in pencil, pen and ink, watercolour and bodycolour on laid paper, depicting architectural features including a fantastical building supported on four short columns above which are two large Corinthian columns above which is a roof structure with large round openings which reveal decorative features. There is a column above the roof structure on the left side. There is an outsize fruit with decorative scales on the left side of the roof and a decorative fence in a Chinoiserie style above the roof structure. There is a fantastical cityscape in the centre of the design behind the central architectural feature. There are floral, foliate and decorative motifs floating amidst the architectural features. The design is in pale yellow ochre, orange, pale pink, red, mauve and dark green.

The design is squared up in pencil for cords and dezines, with dezines numbered in ink.

Purchased with Art Fund support and the National Heritage Memorial Fund

This is a design from the so-called 'Leman album' which was bought from Vanners Silks Ltd. in 1991. Natalie Rothstein catalogued the designs before the album was bought by the Victoria and Albert Museum. She gave each design a VS number (for Vanners Silks) in her catalogue Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century. The designs have been subsequently numbered by the Prints, Drawings and Paintings Department, however, a concordance exists.

Historical significance: The designs collected in the album are, with the exception of some fragmentary medieval examples in Italian collections, the earliest silk designs known to exist.

Attribution note: Natalie Rothstein stated in her book Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century that 'There are some unpainted pencilled features. NB This cannot be a plain damask as it is painted in eight colours.'

This design is from an album that contains 104 designs for fine woven silk cloth and is dated July 15th 1709. A constant supply of fashionable new designs from which to create new lines was required, so patternmakers and master weavers like James Leman supplied a wide range of designs for different weavers. The album contains some of his work from the period 1706-1716, as well as five designs from the 1730s.

James Leman was born in 1688 into a weaving family of Huguenot descent. In 1702 he was apprenticed to his father, Peter, and lived with his family in Stewart Street, Spitalfields in London. Leman's inscription on the design states that it was made for his father Peter Leman, showing that he drew it while still an apprentice.

E.1861:98-1991