AFA Autumn 2019

Antiques & Fine Art 109 2019 Visual references in textiles were sometimes woven in rather than printed, as seen with a spectacular woman’s eighteenth-century gown (Fig. 4, 4a). In the 1730s, capitalizing on the vogue for Eastern cultures, Dutch designers in Amsterdam and Haarlem began creating sumptuous drawloom-woven silk patterns filled with improbable scenes echoing faraway lands and conjuring exotic journeys. Weavers wove reflective, shimmering, and colorful silk in a wider selvage width than typical European-woven silks to imitate those produced in China. Ideas for these motifs came from a variety of sources. John Stalker and George Parker’s Treatise on Japaning [ sic ] and Varnishing (1688), provided inspiration for a skilled pattern artist to create an imagined Asia filtered through a European lens. As the work’s title suggests, this design source also informed the creation of imitation lacquerware, or “japanning,” a process that involved the application of numerous layers of resin-based varnish alternately heated and dried between coats. First brought back by Dutch and Portuguese traders in the seventeenth century, Westerners developed a taste for Japanese lacquer, incorporating it onto portable items such as boxes and looking glasses as well as larger furniture forms (Fig. 5). The final narrative of the show, “Form and Fashion,” looks at the interplay between traditional Western forms of clothing and household objects decorated in ways that suggest a generic East. Eastern influences on traditional Western clothing, including those from India in South Asia, were many. One such example is the adoption of dressing gowns as at-home wear. First introduced in the early seventeenth century by Dutch traders returning from Japan, more fitted, Indian-inspired versions known as banyans gained popularity in England and its American colonies by the eighteenth century. The vibrant red damask example seen in figure 6 is cut like a fashionable man’s suit from the period—complete with false waistcoat front. Despite the novel garment form, the fabric (woven in Spitalfields, England’s center of silk weaving) places this garment firmly in the lexicon of Western fashion. Fig. 6: Banyan, Spitalfields, England, ca. 1775. Red damask-weave silk; dark green twill- weave silk lining; off-white twill-weave wool lining; off-white plain weave wool (flannel) interfacing. Mr. and Mrs. Hugh B. Vanderbilt Fund for Curatorial Acquisitions (2001.10.1). Featuring more than thirty objects. Inspired Design: Asian Decorative Arts and Their Adaptations is on view through February 9, 2020. It is on display in two locations within the Flynt Center of Early New England Life: the lobby and the Helen Geier Flynt Textile Gallery. The show’s themes continue in two of Historic Deerfield’s historic houses: the Stebbins and Wells-Thorn houses. For information call 413.775.7214 or visit www.historic-deerfield.org/exhibitions. David E. (Ned) Lazaro is curator of textiles, Historic Deerfield, Deerfield, Massachusetts, and curator of Inspired Design: Asian Decorative Arts and Their Adaptations , on view through February 2020. All photography by Penny Leveritt.