Good 18th century style Indienne print chintz can be hard to find. For some reason, rambling, graphic florals, in a limited color palette, on a white or light ground aren’t so much in fashion these days. I long for the day when the quilting cotton section is crammed with Georgian textile prints!
That being said, it’s so refreshing to walk into a hardware store and see a perfect – or THREE perfect – 18th century Indienne prints staring you in the face. I recall that Jen, of Festive Attyre, mentioned the curtains at Lowes – good find, Jen!
I bought two big panels – they were about $20 each – and I think I can just eek out a Robe a l’Anglaise. Here are a couple from Kyoto that are inspiring me:
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| Robe a l’Anglaise, 1780s, fabric is from the 1740s. I love the long sleeves and especially the awesomely huge and bold print. |
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| This is not an Indienne textile, but instead Chinese hand-painted silk. The designs are similar, however. I like the trimming on the bodice particularly. |
8 Comments
catspaw
August 18, 2012 at 10:34 PMCool! I really like the first one, maybe because it looks like my bedroom curtains!! XD But the style of the gown has a softness to it that the shorter ones don't. I'd vote for that one! And yes, the long sleeves are really nice!
Lauren Stowell
August 19, 2012 at 10:34 PMI agree! I think I will go for that style with these curtains.
Angela
August 19, 2012 at 6:20 PMThis is a good example to note that we need to get past our comfort zones in where we focus sourcing our sewing and historical costuming needs. You Rock Lauren as usual. Was it Lowe's or another hardware store Orchard's? Thanks
Lauren Stowell
August 19, 2012 at 10:35 PMHi Angela – it was Lowes. I don't know if Orchard would have the same ones, and I'm not sure Lowes is continuing these? They were on an end display at my local store.
KittyKatt
August 20, 2012 at 6:18 AMYou need a time machine. In the Early 90s, the home dec departments of various fabric stores were flooded with these Waverly-esque prints. I sold many, many yards of said fabric when I was coordinator of the home dec department at Fabricland in Olympia, WA.
Anna
August 20, 2012 at 6:24 AMThank you SO much for the heads up…a Lowe's near me apparently has this print with either a black, cream, or red background…I am going over there TOMORROW to try to snap a couple of panels up of the black ground to copy an anglaise from the big KCI book. These are gorgeous prints.
Unknown
August 24, 2012 at 10:31 AMChintz curtains have always been synonymous with beauty and here the author has shown us the lovely curtain
Wallcoverings
Unknown
May 2, 2017 at 12:50 AMBeing in the UK, I don't have access to any of these shops; but I can sit and admire the results of your handiwork at a distance!
I definitely need to do some more research into printing in the 18th century. I have a printed cotton left to me by my grandmother, and members of a group on Facebook of whom I asked whether or not I could use this fabric for an 18th-century project were convinced not. I thought they were right, on the basis that the print was too dense and that it also had shading that made it look as if you were looking at the flowers in the print from different angles. But one of the group members claimed that no prints before the 1920s featured any more than three colours (on top of the background colour). I'm now a bit confused, as a lot of the prints I've looked at on extant 18th-century garments seem to have more colours than that…