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William Kilburn

Dress

Maker

William Kilburn (Irish, 1745-1818), textile designer

Title

Dress

Year

ca. 1790

Medium

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

Materials

cotton

Geography

Place Made: England

Dimensions

Center back length: 172.7 cm (68 inches)

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund

Object Number

1987.028

Type

Publications

Exhibition History

“Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass"
Jun 10, 2014 – Mar 08, 2015

Label copy

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 (Costume and Textiles)
Jul 17, 1987 – Sep 06, 1987
A Decade of Collecting (Painting and Sculpture; Prints, Drawings, and Photographs)
Jun 26, 1987 – Sep 20, 1987

Image use

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Public Domain This object is in the Public Domain and available under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

Tombstone

William Kilburn (Irish, 1745-1818), textile designer
Dress, ca. 1790
Cotton plain weave, block printed
Center back length: 172.7 cm (68 inches)
Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund 1987.028

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