Illustration: Campbell, Harrison and Lloyd. Silk design, 1849.
It is tempting when considering any form of surface pattern produced during the mid-nineteenth century, to see nothing but heavy decoration with thick borders and wildly diverse colour schemes. However, as with any decorative era the range of taste, creative input and pattern dynamics can often reflect a broad spectrum of styles and influences that sometimes even counters the prevailing fashion movements of the era.
The two illustrations for this particular article are both designs for silk produced in 1849 by Campbell, Harrison and Lloyd the London based silk manufacturers. Both are elegant, well-balanced and, although not coloured in these examples, would probably have been limited to either a couple of diverse colours or, using a combination of tones, attempted to achieve a pattern that would have seemed connected across the whole fabric rather than giving the appearance of being added later, almost as if appliqued as happens with so much pattern work.
Campbell, Harrison and Lloyd were particularly adept at producing silk work that was very often destined for the costume rather than interiors market. Textiles for the two markets of costume and interior are very different with interior fabrics usually being much thicker and pattern work being much larger than that produced for costume. How fabrics sit on a figure also has to be taken into consideration and therefore pattern work for the fashion industry tends towards a much smaller and more easily repeatable series of designs.
Illustration: Campbell, Harrison and Lloyd. Silk design, 1849.
When the industrial revolution moved into the textile market automating various aspects of the industry, some areas were better suited to mass manufacture than others. General fashion textiles were particularly good at adapting to machine printing and weaving as so much that was on offer would have been in the realm of small, simple and rapidly repeated geometric or floral motifs. It has to be wondered how much the fashion industry was in charge of fabric design, and how much was due to the practicalities of the machinery of mass production. Did the machine dictate decorative formats of at least the generalised costume market for example?
The English silk industry, although going through the natural ups and downs of various economic depressions and booms, also had to deal with the more sophisticated output from France in particular. Many customers would far rather have spent money on the allure of French silk than they would on domestically produced wares. However, companies such as Campbell, Harrison and Lloyd in London, along with a range of companies in such areas as East Anglia, Lancashire and Paisley carried on producing relatively sophisticated silk textile work over this period of the nineteenth century.
Although the industry did become industrialised, interestingly at a much faster rate in Lancashire than it did in London, many of the companies were still able to produce work that appeared to carry much of the refinement that had been so much a part of work produced in the eighteenth century, particularly by the likes of individual designers such as Anna Maria Garthwaite.
Although not all pattern work produced for silk can be said to be consistently of a sophisticated or harmoniously balanced nature, the two examples shown here from 1849 do give an impression as to what can and could be achieved by the use of simplicity and careful management of the vocabulary of pattern.
Further reading links:
Textile Designs: Two Hundred Years of European and American Patterns Organized by Motif, Style, Color, Layout, and Period
5,000 Years of Textiles (Five Thousand Years of Textiles)
Silk
The Book of Silk
Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century: From the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Eighteenth-Century Clothing at Williamsburg (Williamsburg Decorative Arts Series)
Nineteenth Century Fashion in Detail
Late 18th & 19th Century Textiles
376 Decorative Allover Patterns from Historic Tilework and Textiles (Dover Pictorial Archives)
V&A Pattern: Indian Florals: (Hardcover with CD)
Repeating Patterns 1100 - 1800 (+ CD-Rom)
V&A Pattern: Chinese Textiles
Imperial Chinese Robes: From the Forbidden City
V&A Pattern: Chinese Textiles
