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William Kilburn, textile designer

Dress, ca. 1790

Description

Maker

  • William Kilburn, 1745-1818, Irish, textile designer

Title

Dress

Year

ca. 1790

Medium

Cotton plain weave, block printed

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • cotton

Techniques

  • plain weave,
  • block printing

Dimensions

Center back length: 172.7 cm (68 inches)

Place

England

Type

  • Fashion,
  • Costume

Credit

Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund

Object Number

1987.028

Projects & Publications

Publications

Ireland

Crossroads of Art and Design,1690-1840

A World of Costume and Textiles

A Handbook of the Collection

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.

A Decade of Collecting (Painting and Sculpture; Prints, Drawings, and Photographs)

June 26 - September 20, 1987

A Decade of Collecting (Costume and Textiles)

July 17 - September 6, 1987

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.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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