Selling Silks: A Merchant's Sample Book - Hardcover

Miller, Lesley Ellis

 
9781851777815: Selling Silks: A Merchant's Sample Book
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1851777814 ISBN 13: 9781851777815
Publisher: V&A, 2014

Synopsis

In 1764, British Customs confiscated a book containing hundreds of silk samples of different qualities from French agents who were attempting to sell them illegally in London. The merchant’s sample book acquired in 1972 by the V&A may be this very book, a fascinating record of the eighteenth-century French and English silk industries and their commercial practices. Alongside a full and faithful reproduction of the whole album, Lesley Miller sets in context the role of the book as a marketing tool from the premier European silkweaving centre of Lyon and as a model for Spitalfields manufacturers. This publication makes accessible the contents of an extremely rare and fragile object. Translations of French inscriptions, identification of how samples have migrated from one page to another, and technical analysis of some of the silks, as well as a glossary and biographical data on the Lyonnais suppliers make this an invaluable resource for historians, collectors and designers.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author

Lesley Ellis Miller is Senior Curator of Textiles and Fashion at the V&A. She is a specialist in the silk industry of eighteenth-century Lyon. She is author of a monograph on the fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga (V&A 2007) and is currently working on the refurbishment of the V&A’s galleries of European seventeenth- and eighteenth-century decorative arts.

From the Back Cover

In 1764, British Customs confiscated a book containing hundreds of silk samples of different qualities from French agents who were attempting to sell them illegally in London. The merchant's sample book acquired in 1972 by the V&A may be this very book, a fascinating record of the eighteenth-century French and English silk industries and their commercial practices. Alongside a full and faithful reproduction of the whole album, Lesley Miller sets in context the role of the book as a marketing tool from the premier European silk-weaving centre of Lyon and as a model for Spitalfields manufacturers. This publication makes accessible the contents of an extremely rare and fragile object. Translations of French inscriptions, identification of how samples have migrated from one page to another, and technical analysis of some of the silks, as well as a glossary and biographical data on the Lyonnais suppliers make this an invaluable resource for historians, collectors and designers.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
V&A
Publication date
2014
Language
English
ISBN 10 
1851777814
ISBN 13 
9781851777815
Binding
Hardcover
Number of pages
272