Decorative textiles : an illustrated book on coverings for furniture, walls and floors, including damasks, brocades and velvets, tapestries, laces, embroideries, chintzes, cretonnes, drapery and furniture trimmings, wall papers, carpets and rugs, tooled and illuminated leathers

Front matter

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THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM LIBRARY

Preface

Things made on the loom are called textiles, from the Latin word for cloth; and cloths used to dress the walls and furniture of rooms are called decorative , by contrast with architectural, which refers primarily to the structures decorated. So that, when it was decided to publish this book on rugs and carpets ; tapestries and embroideries ; damasks, brocades and velvets; chintzes and cretonnes; drapery and furniture trimmings, the inevitable title seemed to be “Decorative Textiles.” Nor did the addition of chapters on Wall Papers and Illuminated Leathers render the title less appropriate, because both are also decoratively used, and rely for their success largely upon texture effects borrowed from textiles.

This is the first comprehensive book on the subject to be published. Embodying, as it does, the results of many years of intimate acquaintance with weaves ancient and modern, it appeals equally to those who buy and use, and to those who make and sell. Written in simple, direct style, even when treating technical questions technically, it will be found invaluable not only to those who study and teach in schools and colleges, but also to those who read for personal culture and domestic practice.

The need for such a book is patent. Decorative Textiles constitute the most important and beautiful part of the furnishings of our homes. Upon them we are principally dependent for our aesthetic environment. Upholsteries and draperies with their interwoven patterns in rich colours appeal greatly to both sight and touch, and transform palace and cottage alike from cold to comfortable. Damasks, brocades and velvets, after centuries of aristocratic seclusion, have by modern industrial methods and by modern machinery been brought within the reach of even the comparatively poor. All of us are constantly surrounded by ornament in the form of Decorative Textiles on chairs and couches and floors and walls and windows.

The information on the subject embodied in dictionaries and encyclopaedias and other books of reference, in all languages and in all countries, is often incorrect, generally antiquated and always inadequate. Automobiles and aeroplanes have their up-to-the-minute historians; but Decorative Textiles, with the exception of Tapestries and Oriental Rugs, have been slighted.

More than 1 can express, I am indebted to my publishers for the wealth of pictured examples, many in colour. To an unprecedented degree do these examples reflect on printed paper the texture of woven fabrics. In an extraordinary manner do they render it possible for me, in my text, to present clearly to the public and to the trade, the interesting facts. Delightfully easy do they make it for anyone to become familiar with the Decorative Textiles of all countries and all periods.

The main text of my book is of course Texture. Tbe word is Latin for weave, and as might be expected, it is produced most richly on the loom. I t is of Textiles the most distinctive quality, and when applied to other materials such as wood, marble and brick, iron, bronze and gold, paint, paper and cement, is merely a borrowed and imitative term.

Consequently, while keeping design and pattern and colour and their historic development constantly before me, I have in every chapter accentuated the importance of Texture. I have shown that texture is not only the quality which distinguishes Textiles above other materials, but is also the quality which distinguishes Textiles from one another. It is the quality which distinguishes a damask from a brocade, a plain weave from a twill, a satin from a madras, a velvet from a burlap, a domestic carpet from an Oriental rug.

For a descriptive bibliography of the most useful handbooks, and the most valuable reference books, I refer my readers to Chapter XXI.

New York, June, 1018 G. L. H.

EDITOR S NOTE

Be corative Textiles is the first in a series of authoritative books on the modernised house furnishing arts. The material presented in the present volume constituted, for the most part, a series of articles which appeared in Good Furniture Magazine during the years 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918.

So rapid has been the progress in many departments of the textile arts in America since the war, that constant additions and revisions have been necessary in the present volume, especially in the chapters on Damasks, Brocades and Velvets and on Chintzes and Cretonnes and Laces. This has occasioned the introduction of more than one hundred plates not originally contemplated, including four colour plates of great importance, showing painted cottons from India, recently rediscovered by Stewart Culin, Curator of Ethnology, of the Brooklyn Museum of Arts and Sciences.

In the preparation of the plates no expense has been spared to exhibit, to the fullest extent possible by the most improved printing and engraving processes, the dominant quality of textiles, viz., texture, of which the author treats from first to last. The textiles illustrated have been assembled from many sources. Without the intimate contact established by the author and by the publishers with the foremost textile markets in the world and with America’s wonderful textile mills, Decorative Textiles would not have been possible.

The editor appreciates the warm friendships which his collaboration in this work has won him, on the part of the author and of those in the textile trades whose devotion to the subject is so fully expressed in the solution of the many technical difficulties, which, with their generous co-operation, have been so happily overcome.

Grand Rapids , September, 1018 Henry W. Frohne

Contents

PAGE

I. Damasks, Brocades and Velvets — Part I 1

II. Damasks, Brocades and Velvets — Part II 18