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William Kilburn, textile designer

Dress, ca. 1790

Description

Maker

Title

Dress

Year

ca. 1790

Medium

Cotton plain weave, block printed

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Techniques

Dimensions

Center back length: 172.7 cm (68 inches)

Place

England

Type

Credit

Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund

Object Number

1987.028

Projects & Publications

Publications

Ireland

Crossroads of Art and Design,1690-1840

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

“Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass"

June 10, 2014 - March 8, 2015

William Kilburn was celebrated in his day for his talent for drawing patterns for block printing, and this seaweed-patterned fabric shows his mastery for representing botanicals.

Trained in Dublin as a textile printer, Kilburn was renowned as one of the four best calico printers of his day. Once he arrived in London, his designs were immediately successful. He honed his skills earlier as an illustrator for William Curtis’s Flora Londinensis (1777–1798), a botanical treatise that attempted to represent every plant growing in the environs of London.

Kilburn gave a length of fabric similar to this to Queen Charlotte, wife of England’s George III.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Dress with the accession number of 1987.028. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.