ANNE WANNER'S Textiles in History   /  book reviews
 
Le coton et la mode, 1000 ans d'aventure
editor: Musée Galliera, musée de la mode de la Ville de Paris
authors: Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros, Geneviève Roche-Bernard, Monique Drosson, Vibeke Kingma,
Anne Wanner-JeanRichard, Geoffrey Timmins, Serge Chassagne, Marie-Pierre Deguillaume, Jacqueline Jacqué, Morgane Prigent.
Paris, 2000
text in french, 206 p., many coloured and black and white photos.
ISBN 2-87900-490-X

contents:

- Du coton et de l'impression (de l'Antiquité au XVIIe siècle)
- Ces cotonnades venues des Indes ... Points de vue d'Europe
- Filature et impression au XVIII e siècle, des progrès techniques impressionnants
- Le coton au XVIIIe siècle, une matière moderne
- La mode des cotonnades au XVIIIe siècle
- Le coton et sa fortune critique
- Notices, Glossaire, Bibliographie

Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros
shows the developpment of printed cottons in her contributions. Besides of "Indiennes" she also mentiones white cotton fabrics which were imported from the East. They were used in Western Europe for ladies' lingerie, for accessoires, also for curtains and for furniture. Some of them are ornamented with embroideries and it is a question whether these embroideries were made in the East or in an European country.

Ruth Bleckwenn discusses in her book the embroidery of the "engageantes" which were made in the Dresden (Germany) region.
It will have to be proved whether some of the scarfs, embroidered with flowers in chainstitch were made in the eastern part of Switzerland. It is known that cotton fabrics were produced here from the late 1749s to the end of 18th c., but so far no documented examples of these fabrics could be found.
In the collection of the Textilmuseum St.Gallen there are many examples of embroidered cotton fabrics for scarfs, but documents about their origin are missing. It is known however, that chainstitch was introduced in Switzerland in the year 1750. Swiss merchants saw turkish embroideresses in Lyon and invited them to St. Gallen. Here these women showed to swiss girls how to execute chainstich with a hook.
The year 1750 marks the beginning of embroidery industry in eastern Switzerland. First documents of exportation of embroidered textiles date to 1753.

see also Newsletter 15
home   content Last revised January 20, 2001 For further information contact Anne Wanner wanner@datacomm.ch