Description and Details
A substantial and highly graphic 18th-century whole-cloth quilt, showcasing two magnificent faces of early European printing history. The front displays a dense, finely detailed plum-purple block print dominated by flamboyant, layered blooms in the manner of tree peonies, with smaller carnation-like flowerheads a motif carried into European block printing from Persian and Indian textile tradition; this purple-madder palette is itself highly characteristic of the French indiennes produced to compete directly with English imports. Close inspection of the ground between the large blooms reveals thousands of minute, hand-placed dots, the hallmark of picotage: fine brass pins set into a carved woodblock to render soft tonal shading that no roller or coarse block could achieve, and firm evidence of skilled hand block-printing.
The reverse features a bold, early-to-mid-18th-century style ochre-yellow and white trailing print centred on tall, nodding lily silhouettes, in the manner of the grand Crown Imperial lily, alternating with large, flat-faced rosette blooms resembling open wild roses, echoing the celebrated London outputs of the Bromley Hall Printworks, active from 1694 to 1823 and renowned for sophisticated woodblock and plate-printed furnishing calicos. Given the scale and weight of the design, this was most likely cut from a set of bed curtains or wall hangings, before being repurposed to back this piece. The current golden-mustard tone of the reverse is not its original colour: 18th-century French printers achieved this look by combining an iron-mordant outline with a yellow vegetable dye (weld or quercitron bark) and an indigo overwash, and since indigo and yellow both fade unevenly across two and a half centuries, the cloth was probably a deeper olive or forest green when new.
The reverse shows significant wear consistent with generations of genuine use: in a couple of small areas the fabric and batting have worn right away entirely. This is honest, structural evidence of age rather than a flaw to disguise, and is disclosed here for that reason.
Format note: this piece has been cut along one lateral edge historically, but remains an expansive, clean panel.
Size: 150 x 240 cm (one edge has been cut away).
