In 1978, Cooper Hewitt received a gift of twenty-two jacquard woven souvenir portrait ribbons from Lisa Taylor, the museum’s director at the time. The series was produced by the Warner Woven Label Company, Inc. of Paterson, New Jersey, which every year made a single souvenir ribbon based on a famous master portrait painting in Western...

Hector Guimard (French, 1867–1942) is best known for his architectural works, in particular his iconic Art Nouveau subway entrances for the Paris Métro company. Guimard’s designs employed sensuous curving lines and natural organic forms that transmitted exceptional elegance. For Guimard, architectural design was all-encompassing; every interior and exterior detail was considered as a total work...

This sample book, dating from the late nineteenth-century, contains very fine examples of woven silks from Como, Italy. Since the sixteenth century, Como has been a center for luxurious Italian silks. Lake Como and nearby Alpine streams give the region plenty of water to support sericulture. Close to Lake Como is the Po River Valley where mulberry bushes, the food of silkworms, were widely cultivated.

In 1953, Cooper-Hewitt received from Richard C. Greenleaf (1887–1961) a gift of twelve pieces of embroidery and lace. One piece was an unusual band made in the Greek Islands in the eighteenth century. Embroidered using long-armed cross stitch in red silk on cream-colored linen, a portion of the design was copied from a much older...

In the mid-nineteenth century, a style of bobbin lace commonly known as Chantilly achieved a great popularity that endured in varying degrees until the end of the century.  The town of Chantilly produced lace for the French court in the eighteenth century, but ceased operations during the French Revolution. In the early nineteenth century, lace...

By the late nineteenth century, the United States was producing millions of yards of roller printed cotton fabric each year. One of the most successful print works in the northeast was Cocheco Mills of Dover, New Hampshire, which produced textiles for fashion and interiors. Their fabrics were well-designed and affordable, which meant those in the...

That knitted caps enjoyed great popularity in eighteenth-century Spain can be seen in the many extent examples located in museums in the United States and Europe. Cooper-Hewitt has a very fine cap that was acquired in 1951 as a gift from the generous donor, Richard C. Greenleaf. Knitted in dark red silk, the cap is...

A French embroidered waistcoat dated between 1785-1795 shows Dido and Aeneas in a scene from Didon, a 1783 opera by the Italian composer Niccolò Piccini (1728-1800). The opera’s librettos were composed by Jean-François Marmontel (1723-1799), a highly-respected French historian and writer. Derived from Virgil’s Aeneid, the opera tells a fictional version of the story of...

In the Textiles collection is a wonderful example of a dyer’s record book for printed textiles. The book has special significance as it was the personal property of Edmund Barnes, a textile dyer and printer from northern England. Barnes was working at an unspecified print works, probably in the early 1820s, when he began recording...

An embroidered waistcoat from the Greenleaf collection is a fine example of English aristocratic style from the late eighteenth century. Although France dictated the fashionable silhouette for a man’s suit, which consisted of a coat, waistcoat and knee breeches, the English made subtle changes that allowed for more ease and comfort. The lifestyles of French...

There are hundreds of embroidered samplers in the Textiles Department – they are a collection strength spanning several centuries and many countries. My favorite samplers are those from Mexico for they often show the convergence of European and indigenous cultures in their motifs and designs. While there are a number of beautiful samplers from Mexico,...

Bluette is a textile by an unknown designer made in the design school Atelier Martine. The school was founded by Paul Poiret (1879 – 1944), a celebrated Parisian couturier known for exotic fashions inspired by the Middle East and Asia. Named for his daughter, Atelier Martine embraced the notion of an unstudied, instinctive creativity. Poiret...

While researching one of our printer-dyer record books for the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition Multiple Choice: From Sample to Product, I discovered a curious fabric swatch on page 105. The fragment shows two incomplete figures in Japanese-style dress and includes the text “Dude Never Would Be Missed” and “Got Him On My List.” Both phrases are lyrics...

The cravat is an early version of a man’s necktie. It could be a plain piece of white linen tied around the neck, with the free ends falling below the throat. A gentleman’s cravat would have been decorated with fine lace, as lace was especially fashionable for men in the 17th century. During this period,...

For centuries, European rules of etiquette allowed a woman to receive gloves as a gift from men other than her husband. The practice was so widespread that novelty became an important consideration for the gift-giver when making his selection. Light-colored printed gloves enjoyed popularity with women in early 19th-century Europe, but this pair’s eye-catching design is particularly noteworthy for its unusual optic effect.