Wearable Prints, 1760-1860 - by Greene Hardcover

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2017 Eugene Ferguson Prize, 2015 Millia Davenport Award, 2015 PROSE Award, and 2014 Foreword Reviews' Gold INDIEFAB Book of the Year

A comprehensive guide to early methods of printing dress fabrics

Wearable prints are not only a decorative art form but also the product of a range of complex industrial processes and an economically important commodity. But when did textile printing originate, and how can we identify the fabrics, inks, dyes, and printing processes used on surviving historical examples? In Wearable Prints, 1760-1860, author Susan Greene surveys the history of wearable printed fabrics, which reaches back into the earliest days of the discovery of the delights of selectively patterned cloth and is firmly interwoven with the Industrial Revolution. The bulk of the book is devoted to the process of printing and dyeing. Greene brings together evidence from period publications and manuscripts, extant period garments and quilts, and scholarship on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century chemistry and technology. Making the text come alive, Greene includes some 1600 full-color images, including a plentiful array of textile samples. Wearable Prints, 1760-1860 is a convenient encyclopedic guide, written in plain language accessible to even the most casual reader. Historians, students, costumers, quilters, designers, curators, and collectors will find it an essential resource.

Review Quotes

"The images are especially sensitive to the need to view particular details up close, or to glimpse a portion normally hidden from sight. We see and learn to recognize not just pristine examples, but also faded or altered colours. And many page openings contain liberal spreads that allow comparison of a dozen examples at a glance for the honing of connoisseurship.... Dress historians, in particular, will value the section on American dress forming the second half of chapter one." --Costume (UK)

"Wearable Prints gathers in one volume a comprehensive surveyor dyeing and printing technologies during the period's seminal period of development."--Dress

"Overall this book is well produced with clear type, excellent illustrations, thorough research, and good editing. This labor of love has resulted in a fine resource book on the topic that sets the bar for high quality." --Maine Antique Digest

"Certainly, historians, curators and designers alike will want to use this compendious book and it has a long life ahead as a well-thumbed reference work...." --Textile History (UK)

About the Author

Susan W. Greene is a collector, museum consultant, and independent scholar. Her collection of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century clothing now resides at the Genesee Country Village and Museum in Mumford, New York. She is the author of Textiles for Early Victorian Clothing and several entries in Valerie Steele's Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion and Carol Kammen's Encyclopedia of Local History.