London Silk: Garthwaite & Rothstein
I am just starting to read Zara Anishanslin’s Portrait of a Woman in Silk. This is the fascinating “entwined” story of a silk designer, a Spitalfields silk weaver, a Philadelphia woman, and the artist hired to paint her portrait.
Anishanslin makes mention of the contributions by Natalie Rothstein to the information we have about the eighteenth-century English designer of this silk’s pattern – Anna Maria Garthwaite. Rothstein is a very familiar name, for she gave us A Lady of Fashion: Barbara Johnson’s Album of Styles and Fashion.
[click the photo below for more on the book A Lady of Fashion; and see also my post “Fashion News, Regency Style“]
It is with sadness that I read of Natalie Rothstein’s death in 2010. Her obituary, in The Guardian, makes for interesting reading – and mentions the title of her main work on Garthwaite: Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (1990). Rothstein was quite prolific, publishing much about the collection she knew best (i.e., the V & A). This lengthy obituary features an equally lengthy bibliography.
It was finding online information (and images!) of Garthwaite’s designs that made me want to share with you. Especially, this beautifully presented Waistcoat (1747) from the Met Museum; details and overview images. A lengthy blog post on the Courtauld Institute of Art‘s website is well worth a read. All this history of the Spitalfields weaving industry might also inspire you to visit Dennis Severs’ House at 18 Folgate Street. I think I blogged about it long before my own visit, so entranced was I by the “story” of and behind the “museum”. (But I wasn’t prepared for the locked front door that had to be knocked on and answered!)
The thrill is also over the Victoria and Albert sharing images of Garthwaite’s designs. Although I didn’t look at them all, 44 pages came up [some _are_ tagged ‘unknown’ artist; most are Garthwaite’s designs] when I searched for ‘Garthwaite’!
There’s even a Pinterest page dedicated to her designs and Garthwaite has her own Wikipedia page.
Some of the less intricate designs of flowering tendrils remind me of the Botanicals painted by the women in the Smith family (two generations, including the future Emma Austen, my diarist) [see the page Artwork Done By], which I have long thought would make for beautiful fabrics. As a “companion” piece, if the Botanicals at the Royal Horticultural Society interest you, you might dip into “Further Thoughts on Four Sisters” to acquaint yourself with the four sisters of Earl Stoke Park – Emma’s mother and three aunts, who, with Miss Margaret Meen, their teacher in the technique, is represented in the RHS collection.
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Additional reading:
“A Dress of Spitalfields Silk” – lengthy essay and some splendid photographs of an actual garment
British Postmarks (tutorial)
An interesting, because it’s so useful, “tutorial” (short: 33 slides) of early 19th century British Postmarks – and how to understand all you see when looking at a piece of “UK postal history”.
It forms part of the Digital Mary Russell Mitford project — one of their project include digitizing and transcribing her letters!
As you can see from the “example” photo, the images help explain what exactly you are looking at. I couldn’t resist this image – with its identification of “delivery” and “mileage” stamps, the letter’s “franking,” its “seal,” and (especially) the “finger” of the person making the image!
Clicking on the photo above will take you to the second version (a bit longer than the first version) of THE POSTMARKS OF MITFORD’S LETTERS (by Greg Bondar, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg).
[Once you are on their site: click the [IN] icon (lower right-hand corner), which will allow you to access the full screen mode]
You will learn to recognize:
- a MILEAGE stamp
- a DUTY stamp
- a DELIVERY stamp
- CHARGE mark(s)
- RECEIVING HOUSE stamp (for instance, the Two Penny post)
Some explanations, too, of rimmed and double-rimmed stamps; colors of ink; and – for 1812 – a list of postal charges (based on distance and “weight” [number of pieces of paper]).
Because the site is dedicated to Mary Russell Mitford, near the end of the slides are images of seals she used; paper types used (based on impressions in the paper). For those interested in the output of Mitford, the homepage of Digital Mitford is your place to start.
Humphrey “Shop Album” @ Yale
This VERY recognizable cartoon is part of a “blue paper shop album” created by George Humphrey, nephew of the “famous” Hannah Humphrey and her shop of satirical cartoons.
Yale acquired the album in 2014 – and they have conserved and cleaned this delightful piece of political history, and now (press release dated 28 Feb 2019) invite scholars and students to see it in person. “Researcher from afar may browse images of the volume online.” They also say that each image has been catalogued in Orbis (Yale’s database of holdings), in which summary notes appear.
“This large folio album (approximately 66 x 50 cm [approx. 26 x 19.5 inches]) includes 130 early nineteenth-century prints, 117 of which were not previously represented in the Lewis Walpole Library collection. All are etchings and engravings with original, fresh publisher’s hand color, with more than a dozen of the titles not held by the British Museum.”
“Virtually all the prints are satires dedicated to the scandal over the trial of George IV’s divorce from Queen Caroline and the Queen’s alleged affair with Count Bergami. The album spans roughly one year of prints published from June 1820, when the Queen returned from Europe to London, through May 1821. She died shortly thereafter on August 7, 1821. The satires feature many major figures involved in the scandal. “
“The album is a rare surviving example of a volume that a print seller would put together in order to showcase for clients visiting the shop the satirical prints available for purchase either from existing inventory or to be printed to order from copper plates in the publisher’s stock. Most such albums are broken up and sold by later dealers. Further, the prints in the album are fine examples of prints with publisher’s hand coloring.”
“In fall 2019, the Humphrey album will be featured as part of an exhibition project Trial by Media: The Queen Caroline Scandal at the Yale Law Library (September 9 to December 20, 2019). The exhibition is a collaboration between Cynthia Roman, Curator of Prints, Drawings and Paintings, The Lewis Walpole Library, and Mike Widener, Rare Book Librarian & Lecturer in Legal Research, Lillian Goldman Law Library. A conference is planned for the fall and a related online exhibition will feature brief essays by scholars from across disciplines.”
Two Teens in the Time of Austen 