Selling Silks: A Merchant's Sample Book

In 1764, British customs confiscated a book containing hundreds of samples of different qualities of silks from French agents who were attempting to sell them illegally in London. This merchant’s sample book was acquired in 1972 by the Victoria and Albert Museum, and today it provides a fascinating record of the 18th-century French and English silk industries and their commercial practices. Alongside a full and faithful reproduction of the whole beautiful album―an extremely rare, fragile, and significant object―Lesley Miller describes how the sample book was a marketing tool for the premier European silk-weaving center of Lyon, France, and a model for English textile manufacturers in Spitalfields. She also discusses how the silks were made and for whom through the use of contemporary portraits and archival documents dating to the 1760s. The album itself is astonishing, reproducing hundreds of patterns.

• Printed Textiles: British and American Cottons and Linens 1700-1850
• The American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Dressmaking: How to Hand Sew Georgian Gowns and Wear Them With Style
• The French Ribbon
• Muslin
• Wearable Prints, 1760-1860: History, Materials, and Mechanics
• Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean
• The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England
• The Fabric of India
• V&A Pattern: Spitalfields Silks
• Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century: In the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, With a Complete Catalogue