Description:
Fragment of a piece of drawloom-woven dress silk. The ground is woven in a green blue ribbed tabby weave. The thicker weft yarns create the slight horizontal rib effect that was then subjected to a large amount of pressure to flatten the ribs, thereby creating a watered (French: moire) effect. The drawloom's figure harness created additional decorative effects through supplementary, weft patterned floats known as brocading wefts. These brocading wefts do not extend the entire width of the fabric, but were only used where the design called for them. There were 5 colors used in the brocading floats; two shades of green, and three shades of pink. The largest floral spray motifs measure 5 1/2" long x 4 1/2" wide. Additional, supplementary warp threads, bound in a satin weave, form vertical stripes in yellow and two shades of pink. The stripes at the selvage edges help to cleverly conceal fabric joins when the material was being made up into a garment. White colored weft floats create a further decorative effect in the ground, resembling a meandering feather or fur trail, and known as a flush or flushing effect. The entire design is repeated two times across the fabric width in a mirror or point repeat. The vertical repeat of the pattern is 20". The fabric's selvage width is 20 7/8". This fabric may possibly have been woven in Lyon, France's center of silk weaving in the 18th century. According to curator Lesley Ellis Miller, Lyon silk designer Nicholas Joubert was noted for his brocaded, moire (moire broche) silks. Patterned silks were some of the costly fabrics availabe for dress and furnishings in the 18th century. It could take many months to design, prepare the loom, and weave them. English and European centers of 18th-century silk weaving included Spitalfields (East London), Lyon (289 miles from Paris), and Amsterdam and Haarlem in Holland. There is evidence that these costly fabrics were imported and worn in New England, but in far fewer numbers.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+F.471 |
