Join curator and world textile expert Mary Schoeser for this online lecture exploring English Chintz.
Chintzes, those multi-coloured floral printed cottons that were already widely known and loved by 1800 and had originally owed their appearance to India. Yet during the first 75 years of the nineteenth century, British designers developed a style that was unique. It owed something to India and to the French but was even more influenced by the creation of English gardens, the most famous of which is Kew Gardens, officially founded as a national botanical garden in 1840.
This online lecture demonstrates how designs changed over the period, as well as highlighting the importance of women as consumers, whose tastes were informed by new trends in gardening and collections of botanical prints. Mary will also illustrate the chintzes that were criticised as bad taste and reveals whether that made them more or less popular.
This is a recording of the online event, The Flowering of English Chintz: 1800-1875 which originally took place on Thursday 27 May 2021 via Microsoft Teams.