Wearable Prints, 1760-1860: History, Materials, and Mechanics

Wearable prints are not only a decorative art form but also the product of a range of complex industrial processes and an economically important commodity. But when did textile printing originate, and how can we identify the fabrics, inks, dyes, and printing processes used on surviving historical examples? In Wearable Prints, 1760 1860 (winner of 5 awards, see below), author Susan Greene surveys the history of wearable printed fabrics, which reaches back into the earliest days of the discovery of the delights of selectively patterned cloth and is firmly interwoven with the Industrial Revolution. The bulk of the book is devoted to the process of printing and dyeing. Greene brings together evidence from period publications and manuscripts, extant period garments and quilts, and scholarship on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century chemistry and technology. Making the text come alive, Greene includes some 1600 full-color images, including a plentiful array of textile samples.
Wearable Prints, 1760-1860 is a convenient encyclopedic guide, written in plain language accessible to even the most casual reader. Historians, students, costumers, quilters, designers, curators, and collectors will find it an essential resource.
Wearable Prints has wonthe Eugene S. Ferguson Prize for 2017 from the Society for the History of Technology and the Millia Davenport Publication Award for 2015 from the Costume Society of America.Kent State University Press has won the 2015 PROSE award in the category of Single Volume/Humanities and Social Sciences for excellence in publishing--with Wearable Prints 1760-1860; also the 2015 Benjamin Franklin Silver Award in History from the Independent Book Publishers' Association, and the 2014 Indiefab Gold Award in Reference from the Foreword Review.