Anna Maria Garthwaite

in 1746 wearing a gown of English silk damask woven to a surviving 1743 design by Anna Maria Garthwaite.Baumgarten, Linda: "What Clothes Reveal", p. 85] ] Anna Maria Garthwaite (b. Harston or Harsten, Leicestershire, 14 March 1688 [This is the date and place given by the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", p. 560; most museums give her birth year as 1690. This [http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/g/a/t/Carolyn-Gathright/GENE8-0005.html#ENDNOTEREF299 genealogical record for Rev. Ephraim Garthwaite] gives Anna Maria's baptism date as 14 March 1688/89, which would be 1689 New Style.] – d. 1763) was an English textile designer known for creating vivid floral designs for silk fabrics hand-woven in Spitalfields near London in the mid-18th century. Garthwaite was acknowledged as one of the premiere English designers of her day. Many of her original designs in watercolours have survived, and silks based on these designs have been identified in portraiture and in costume collections in England and abroad. [ [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/txt_s/hd_txt_s.htm Textile Production in Europe: Silk, 1600–1800] , retrieved 26 April 2008.]

Life and work

Anna Maria Garthwaite was the daughter of the Reverend Ephraim Garthwaite (1647-1719) of Grantham, Lincolnshire, who was rector of nearby Harston, Leicestershire, at the time of her birth, and his wife Rejoyce Hausted. [ [http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/g/a/t/Carolyn-Gathright/GENE8-0005.html#ENDNOTEREF299 Genealogical record for Rev. Ephraim Garthwaite] , retrieved 26 April 2008] Anna Maria left Grantham to live in York with her twice-widowed sister Mary from 1726 to 1728Rothstein, Natalie: "Woven Textile Design in Britain 1750 to 1850", p.111] They relocated to a house in Princes Street (now Princelet Street) [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE7DD1431F935A1575BC0A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all Deitz, Paula: "Discovered Along the Flowered-Silk Road", "New York Times" 26 August 1990] , retrieved 25 April 2008] in the silk-weaving district of Spitalfields east of the City of London in 1728, and Anna Maria created over 1000 designs for woven silks there over the next three decades. Some 874 of her original designs in watercolour from the 1720s through 1756 have survived and are now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. [ [http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/hd/txt_s/ho_62.136.1.htm Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History] , retrieved 25 April 2008] Many of these designs are dated and annotated with weaving instructions and the names of the weavers to whom they were sold.

Garthwaite's work is closely associated with the mid-18th century fashion for flowered woven silks in the Roccoco style, with its new emphasis on asymmetrical structures and sinuous "C"- and "S"-curves. She adapted the "points rentrés" technique developed by the French silk designer Jean Revel in the 1730s for representing near-three-dimensional floral patterns through careful shading,Rothstein, Natalie: "The Elegant Art of Woven Silk". In "An Elegant Art", p. 83-85] and designed large-scale damasks as well as floral brocades. From 1742-43, Garthwaite's work—and English silk design in general—diverged from French styles, favouring clusters of smaller naturalistic flowers in bright colours scattered across a (usually) pale ground. The taste for vividly realistic florals reflects the advances in botanical illustration in Britain at this time, and can be contrasted with French silks of the period which show stylized flowers and more harmonious—if unrealistic—colourations.Rothstein, Natalie: "Silk in the Early Modern Period". In David Jenkins, ed.: "The Cambridge History of Western Textiles" p. 554-555] [Browne, "Silk Designs of the 18th Century", p. 8 ] [http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-20809817.html Kraak, Deborah E.: "Eighteenth-century English floral silks." In "The Magazine Antiques" 1 June 1998] , retrieved 26 April 2008]

Spitalfields silks were widely exported to Northern Europe and especially to Colonial America, which was prohibited from trading directly with France by Britain's Navigation Acts.Baumgarten, Linda: "What Clothes Reveal", p. 84] Surviving silk skirt panels said to have been owned by Martha Dandridge prior to her marriage to George Washington have been attributed to Garthwaite, and her designs appear in colonial portraits of the period (see painting, above right).

It is uncertain where or when Garthwaite died, but her will dated 1758 was read 24 October 1763, at Princes Street in the parish of Christ Church."Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", p. 560-561.]

Assessment and legacy

Garthwaite has been called the "pre-eminent silk designer of her period" [Thunder, Moira: "Improving Design for Woven Silks", "Journal of Design History" 17(1):5-27, 2004, accessed online at [http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/17/1/5 Oxford Journals] , retrieved 26 April 2008] . Malachy Postlethwayt (c. 1707-1767) in "The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce" of 1751 listed Garthwaite as one of three designers who had "introduced the Principles of Painting into the loom." [Cited at [http://www.albanyinstitute.org/collections/decorative/dress.htm Albany Institute of History and Art] , retrieved 25 April 2008]

A Blue Plaque granted by English Heritage in 1998 marks the house at 2 Princelet Street, Spitalfields, E1, where Garthwaite lived and worked. [ [http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.001002006005/chooseLetter/G Blue Plaques at English Heritage] , retrieved 26 April 2008]

Notes

ee also

*History of silk

References

*Baumgarten, Linda: "What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America", Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-300-09580-5
*Browne, Claire: "Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century: From the Victoria and Albert Museum", London, Thames & Hudson, 1996, ISBN 0500278806
*Ginsburg, M. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/50919 ‘Garthwaite, Anna Maria (1688–1763?)’] "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0198613717, doi|10.1093/ref:odnb/50919 (subscription required for online access)
*Freshman, Philip, Dorothy J. Schuler, and Barbara Einzig, eds.: "An Elegant Art: Fashion & Fantasy in the Eighteenth Century", Abrams/Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1983, ISBN 0875871119
*Jenkins, David, ed.: "The Cambridge History of Western Textiles", Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0521341078
*Rothstein, Natalie: "The Victoria and Albert Museum's Textile Collection: Woven Textile Design in Britain to 1750", Canopy Books, New York, London, and Paris, 1994. ISBN 1558598499
*Rothstein, Natalie: "The Victoria and Albert Museum's Textile Collection: Woven Textile Design in Britain 1750 to 1850", Canopy Books, New York, London, and Paris, 1994. ISBN 1558598502

Further reading

*Rothstein, Natalie: "Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century: In the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, With a Complete Catalogue", Bullfinch Press, 1990, ISBN 0821218123

External links

* [http://www.vandaimages.com/results.asp?cat1=Spitalfields+Pattern+Books&X8=17-28 Spitalfields Pattern Books including designs by Anna Maria Garthwaite at the Victoria and Albert Museum image archive]
* [http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/hd/txt_s/ho_62.136.1.htm Silk brocade designed by Anna Maria Garthwaite, 1748, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art]
* [http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/hd/eudr/ho_C.I.66.14.2.htm Surviving sleeved waistcoat, 1747, patterned silk designed by Anna Maria Garthwaite]
* [http://www.albanyinstitute.org/collections/decorative/dress.htm Surviving dress of silk designed by Anna Maria Garthwaite, at the Albany Institute of History and Art]
* [http://www.abegg-stiftung.ch/e/museum/sonderaus/1998/98bilder.html Surviving 18th centry English slks, several designed by Anna Maria Garthwaite, in the Abegg Foundation collection in Switzerland]
* [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/txt_s/hd_txt_s.htm Textile Production in Europe: Silk, 1600–1800] (contextual essay at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History)