Persian Pears & Florence Peto

Miscellaneous thoughts about paisley:

Magazine cover featuring a boteh or shawl print

Found this picture of a baby nurse wearing a terrific ruffled cape made of a paisley print, maybe in the 1870s.
It's from a blog called 19th-century American Women: A Museum in a Blog
http://b-womeninamericanhistory19.blogspot.com/

Wool/cotton blend printed in a paisley, about 1880

I wrote about the lack of historic sources for the term "Persian Pickle" recently. Click here to see that post:
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/04/persian-pickles-and-shawl-prints.html

Indigo paisley border about 1890.

The jagged edges imitate the woven shawl designs.

I'm still working on sources for various names for the design. I was surprised to NOT find the word paisley in the Oxford English Dictionary---is the word not used in England? (ouch! there are a lot of negatives in that thought.)

12 hours later: I went to the library and read their edition in regular-size print of the O.E.D. Paisley is in there as "a garment or material made [in Paisley] or having the curvilinear design characterstic of cloth made there, or the pattern itself." The earliest use of the term Paisley shawl they cite is 1834; the earliest possible use of the word for a boteh pattern is 1898---"trimmed with paisleys."

While reading my notes about Florence Peto, who was a textile dealer and historian in the 1930-1960 years, I came across her reference to a paisley design as a "Persian Pear" in the Magazine Antiques in July, 1942, giving us another visual metaphor for the paisley cone shape or boteh.

The idea of a Persian Pear may come from oriental rug dealers. I found an article in a 1918 magazine criticizing all the imagined myths published about rug motifs.

As for the so-called Persian pear pattern, concerning which the rug books evolve so many fanciful theories, I know no more about it than they. But I do know that the Persians call it the bute, meaning twig or bush, by which they further designate the camel-thorn of their bare plains. And I have seen the same design on old Indian silks…

"About Rug Books" by H.G. Dwight in The Bookman Volume 46, 1918

Read more about Florence Peto by clicking here:

http://www.quiltershalloffame.net/index_files/Page854.html

http://mendofleur.com/2009/11/04/florence-peto-part-i/

http://mendofleur.com/2009/11/06/florence-peto-part-ii/

And here's a small stamped piece by Linda Frost.

She sees birds in everything, including butah, boteh and bute shapes.

Check her blog 13th Street Studio

http://www.13thstreetstudio.typepad.com/

Morris Workshop Colors

In The Morris Workshop reproduction collection I did for Moda we have six colorways. (Colorways is textile jargon for color palettes.) I gave each a name derived from Morris workshop history. While Fennel Green and Indigo (above) recall colors, the other names come from Morris places and people.

The tan is Hammersmith Tea, a reference to a London neighborhood on the north bank of the Thames that is now home to the William Morris Society and a name which the firm used for carpets. Merton Brown (above) is named for Merton Abbey in a village in Surrey, home to much of the design and textile production.

Red House Brick remembers the Red House in Upton, Bexleyheath, which Morris designed and lived in with his family.

Wardle's Sky Blue recalls Thomas Wardle who was a designer and dyer.

Britain's Textile Society is hosting a conference dedicated to the work of Thomas Wardle September 25-27 timed to coincide with the exhibition: Dye, Print, Stitch: Textiles by Thomas and Elizabeth Wardle at Macclesfield Silk Museum in Cheshire. Click here to read more about the conference:
http://www.textilesociety.org.uk/events/event-details.php?textile-event=102

The Morris prints are so great (No thanks to me---thank the Morris Workshop artists) that simple patchwork is quite effective. Here's one by Linda Frost just using the strips.

And Denniele Bohannon sent photos of a quilt made of triangles from the last Morris collection, A Morris Garden. She donated it to her church for a raffle. She writes:

"The Harrisonville (Missouri) United Methodist quilters did the quilting. I am one of them....learning from the best."