1810 woven Chinese silk cloth with handpainted decorations. Image @Victoria & Albert Museum
We have come to associate delicate white muslin material woven in India with Regency fashion to such a degree that it is easy to forget that other colors and printed fabrics were also used, and that many silk and cotton dresses were made of fabrics with colorful patterns and distinctive designs, such as this 1820’s day dress, or this 1790 caraco printed jacket…
1790 Caraco jacket of printed cotton. Image @Christie's
…or the lively Ackermann dress below.
Dinner dress, Ackermann. 1817
Some of the fabrics were lavishly embroidered…
1810 Evening Dress with embroidery
… or painted to produce a patterned effect.
1780-1800. Painted satin cloth. Image @Victoria & Albert museum
But with the industrial revolution, printing and dying techniques began to be improved.
Fabric, Manchester art gallery
By the mid-eighteenth century, wood-block printing on cotton and linen textiles had developed to a high standard, even though the home market was affected by legislation protecting the silk and wool industries.” – *V&A
Block printed round gown. Image @Colonial Williamsburg
The dyeing techniques used to produce the strong fast colours on imported Indian chintzes which had dazzled European customers in the seventeenth century had been mastered, and colour ranges were developed further with the introduction of ‘pencilling’ of indigo in the 1730s, and ‘china blue’ by the early 1740s.” – *V&A
Block printed cotton, 1790. Image @Victoria & Albert Museum
“A commentator on the state of British textile arts in 1756 wrote : “chintz…can imitate the richest silk brocades, with a great variety of beautiful colours. This length of block-printed cotton dress fabric is typical in its design and colouring of English production at the end of the 18th century.” – *Block Printed Cotton, Victoria & Albert Museum
Child's cotton dress roller printed, 1820. Image @Vintage Textile
Roller printing also became popular.
Roller printing, a mechanical improvement on the copperplate technique, was developed in England in the late eighteenth century and was in use in the north of England by 1790.” – **Met Museum
Detail, roller printed Regency day gown.
The copper roller gave manufacturers the ability to print larger quantities of fabrics at greater speeds, for lower prices, and the production of printed cotton increased dramatically in the nineteenth century.” – ** Source: Textile Production in Europe: Printed, 1600–1800 | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- 1800 dress fabric, British. Image @Victoria & Albert Museum
19th century white cotton gown with roller print. Image @Greene Collection
More on the topic:
- Block Printed Cotton, The Encyclopedia Brittanica Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 1888
- Pretty Prints, Clever Cottons: 18th century fabrics
- How the Fashion Obsessed Jane Austen Would Love What is Under My Christmas Tree
- Printed European Textiles: 18th Century
- Printed Cottons
- Calico Printing
- Toile de Jouy: A fabric with roots in the 18th century
- Textile Production in Europe: Printed 1600-1800
- Purchase facsimiles of 18th century cotton printed fabrics
1795-1800 Printed cotton gown detail. Image @Victoria&Albert Museum
Jane Austen's World 
Dear Vic, this post seems to be a entirely class about fabric! Thanks for such information! ;)
Beautiful fabrics! Thanks for posting.
Vic,
I have almost the same cotton fabric Caraco’s pattern!
Fascinating post, Vic. I had a sun dress with a copy of the 1790 V & A material you show here. If you look at Italy and France for 19th C textiles, they have more color and movement than the English and American. It apparently has to do with the import of Indian textiles with their Islamic and royalty motifs – brighter florals and paisleys. The Provencal textiles today still show this influence.
Oh, give me that embroidered one! Gorgeous! I am constantly amazed at the information you come up with, Vic. You are amazing (and, admit it, you HAVE cloned yourself OR figured out how to get by on no sleep at all).
Love that Caraco jacket. So pretty.
Loved this post. Where do you find all of this? Was it from the book about the Threads of Feeling?
Can you tell me what a sprigged muslin is? I’ve imagined it to be as a white cotton cloth with a patterned embroidery all over it. Do you have any pictures of any? If my description is right, how did the embroidery happen? Or was it just a print?
Here’s an image of a sprigged muslin dress: http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5280834
Sprigged means to decorate with designs of twigs. This dress is white on white. Very pretty. And yes, it was embroidered. You can read a bit about the origins of this kind of embroidery here: http://rankine.com.au/html/tambour_work.html
The images are from all over the Internet: Christie’s auction house, the Met Museum, and the V&A museum, to name a few. Thanks for stopping by!
So, after looking at the sites you referenced, during the Regency period this tambouring would still have been accomplished by somebody sitting at a tambour (picture embroidery hoop) hand embroidering the “sprigging”? It doesn’t seem as if they found a machine to do it until late in the 19th century. Was this fabric more expensive than, say, calicos?
BTW, thanks for answering my queries so quickly and so fully!
Oh, yes, definitely a hand embroidered cloth would be more expensive than printed cloth. This was an age of huge industrial change, though. And soon machines would replace hand made cloth. Stay tuned! Look at this lush example. You’ll need to zoom in very closely to see the elaborate details. http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=196557
Thanks, Vic. As someone who embraces the old methods of needlework, as well as some of the newer ones, I was absorbed by this post. I LOVE handwork with a needle. But, practically speaking, a gown for everyday wear with that much needlework would really need to have been thought through. I have smocked my childrens’ clothing but it took much time and planning so I’ve wondered what went into the average regency woman’s dress if sprigged muslin was “the thing”. Who did the embroidering before the machines?
Good question, Karen. We must remember that most of the clothes that have survived were not worn by ordinary women. Women of modest means wore calicos and cottons and rough woolens for day wear, and they wore these clothes until they were ragged or they cut them down to make outfits for their children, for cloth was dear and much of it was recycled. Hence, we have very few samples of clothes that belonged to ordinary women.
The tender white muslins that were used for dresses for rich young ladies, were not meant for the lower classes. (Remember how appalled Mrs. Norris – Mansfield Park – was when she discovered that a maid owned a white dress? This was, in her mind, cause for dismissal, for the ownership of that dress demonstrated that the maid had uppity notions). White was a hard color to maintain in an age when laundering was a complex and laborious business. Eleanor Tilney only wore white, which said something about her exalted station and the amount of time her maids must have spent maintaining her wardrobe.
As for embroidery, many cloths were embroidered in India and then imported; and in Great Britain, scores of young women who moved from the country to the big city worked as poorly paid seamstresses whose lives were nothing but labor and toil from sun up to sun down until their eyes and backs gave out. These poor girls worked for a pittance. In that second sprigged muslin dress, whose link I provided, the pieces would be embroidered before the dress was assembled. That is why the embroidered patterns so closely follow the edges of the sleeves, the bodice, and the skirt.
In addition, women in that day and age sewed and embroidered to pass the time. I recall that my Dutch grandmother and great aunt were always crocheting doilies and embroidering. Their output was staggering. (They learned needlework in school.) Even ladies from wealthy backgrounds embroidered caps and handkerchiefs, made their own reticules, and embellished their bonnets. If they did not sew fine work for themselves, they would work on projects meant for the poor basket. Jane made shirts for her brothers, and Cassandra must have done so as well. It is mind-boggling to think how many hours women in days of yore (rich and poor) spent doing needlework, in addition to their other duties.
Hope this answered your question.
This post is wonderful. I loved learning about the fabrics that were used for women’s clothing during this period of time. I am also a huge fan of Jane Austen, and am so happy to discover your blog. Thank you for such an informative post. And beautiful!
I’m trapped between just loving the painstaking beauty of the fabrics, and envisioning the seamstresses and mill workers who got paid next to nothing for producing it all….
Fascinating Vic. Beautiful patterns. With, the amount of time and money that went into one dress, it is not surprising that the average women wore them until they were threadbare. Vic, do you know how many dresses a women of gentry status might own and how long they lasted?
Hi,
Can you give me more information on cravats? I need one for the civil war period and I don’t know how long one should be or what kind of fabric. Thanks for your help!
Matthew
Hello,
I would like to know more details of how the Regency dresses were closed; front, back, drawstring, buttons, laces? I can’t find this info anywhere on the net.
Can anyone help?
Thanks, Frances