QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Thursday, February 23, 2017

Repro of a Repro of a Repro of an Indienne


Indienne (detail), Wood block printing on cotton, factory Oberkampf in Jouy, 1785

Way at the top of the blog page I've posted a picture of a repro print I did a few years ago in a line called Lately Arrived from London with the document print I copied it from.

Directly above is the same print from the The Museum of Printed Textiles in Mulhouse, France. Could my document print be as old as 1785?  Is it the oldest piece of fabric in my collection?


My piece of chintz on the left,
 white colorway of the repro print I called Seaflower
in the center and tan colorway on the right.


I am reading Susan W. Greene's estimable book Wearable Prints 1760-1860. She shows two versions of the same print with the Oberkampf print being the newer one (page 97). The print on the left above is a little more crude in the drawing and printing style. She believes it to be an Indian chintz that inspired the Oberkampf print.

I wonder about my example, though. It is not the same colors as the Jouy museum's print.

Mine is stained but the original colors seem clear, and the blues and purples
just aren't the same as the earlier prints. I think I have a later copy of the Oberkampf print.

Much like this one with the same bright colors.
Perhaps late 19th-c to early 20th?
I recall a friend of a friend gave it to me years ago.

The Seaflower repro. We didn't do the purples.


Seaflower in the background of Roseanne Smith's star quilt.

So the Seaflower print is a repro of a repro of a repro of an Indian chintz.

The tan colorway

I wish I could tell you where to buy some yardage of the six-year-old Seaflower repro but it seems to be sold out. I did find several other prints from Lately Arrived from London still available online. If you do a web search for Lately Arrived from London you might find some.

I can, however,  tell you where to buy Susan W Greene's book Wearable Prints 1760-1860.
It's a must-have if you are interested in historic fabrics. The subtitle says it all:
History, Materials and Mechanics.

A little more about the Lately Arrived from London collection from 2011.

Roseanne's quilt before the border.

And after.
Now she has to quilt it.

5 comments:

  1. Lately Arrived From London is my favorite fabric line EVER! Wish I had bought ten times what I did buy.

    The design style of the print you are talking about is definitely 18th C or older. Are you familiar with the Dutch reprints that were reproduced for years by DenHaanWagenmakers in The Netherlands? That company got into a legal dispute with Petra Prins a few years ago, I know nothing of the merits or details of the claims and it's now settled. Petra Prins today produces similar designs under the name Den Haan Wagenmakers and under her name using 44" greige goods and the same printing process as all of our quilt fabric, but the original Museum reproductions printed with special pigments in 60"width are still available from Betina Printing at www.dutchfabric.nl. Their designs are based on 17th & 18th Century authentic documents and manuscripts of fabrics "shipped to Holland by the merchants of the United East Indies Company, VOC". Obercampf must have been copying the same thing.

    See Betina Printing's designs here, click "chintzes" and "Indiennes":

    http://www.dutchfabric.nl/chintzes/

    When I saw that Mariners Compass quilt you recently posted, I thought the prints were of this early era. However, I do remember a quilt fabric line by Terry Clothier Thompson which also reproduced these small stripes of fancy chintz flowers based on an early 19th C. fabric line, and there is some of that type of fabric in one of Anna Catharine Hummel Markey Garnhart's quilts c. 1830's-40's, so as you say, are we dealing with repros? or repros of repros? or repros of repros of repros?

    I have a complete, uncut bundle of Lately From London fat quarters that I'll never cut or use, I just like them as is.












    ReplyDelete
  2. Knowing all this makes me love SEAFLOWER even more!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you Barbara ... today you granted me with a wonderful and unexpected gift ... the online visit of my favorite museum in Jouy ... I used to live in its vicinity and it's there that I saw my first patchwork "exposition" ... many years ago ... my mum gave me the "greedy hunger" for beautiful material, I mean both material quality and design ... so today I'm an old quilter ...
    Thank you for the quality of your blogs ... i learn a lot from you ... MERCI INFINIMENT ....

    ReplyDelete
  4. Martine. You are fortunate to have been to the museum in Jouy. Someday I will go.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Interesting. I'm going to Cyndi's (Busy Thimble) tomorrow. If she has any more "Lately Arrived from London", I'll have her contact you. I don't hold out a lot of hope, but I'll try.

    ReplyDelete