Starting in the 1860s, a fascination with all things Japanese swept through Britain. After centuries of isolation — during which Japan permitted trade only with the Dutch — the country’s opening to Western commerce in 1853 sparked a wave of interest in Japanese art and design.
Prints, metalwork, ceramics, textiles and other “Oriental” objects poured into Britain and quickly became fashionable. Responding to this demand, British designers began incorporating Japanese motifs into their own creations, producing luxurious silk jacquards and printed cotton furnishing fabrics that reflected these new influences.
To support this trend and provide design inspiration, textile manufacturers began compiling reference materials based on Japanese sources. One example is the archive of the Calico Printers’ Association, a British textile company founded in 1899. Now housed in the Arthur D. Jenkins Library, the archive contains hundreds of gouache renderings of Japanese textile designs, intended as references for British designers. These designs are described as having originated in “the 14th–18th centuries, copied from the sketchbook of a Kioto [Kyoto] weaver.”
Created by an unknown illustrator, the renderings were likely available to designers who were developing the association’s 1911 Japanese-inspired cotton fabrics, examples of which are now held in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection. Today, this archive continues to serve as a valuable resource for both textile historians and contemporary designers.
Researched by Marcy Wasilewski
Marcy Wasilewski grew up surrounded by textiles in a family of tailors. She has a master’s degree in museum education from the George Washington University. Her early museum career was followed by a long career in healthcare administration. She returned to the museum world as a docent in 2014.
About the Library
The Arthur D. Jenkins Library is a non-circulating research library featuring thousands of hard-to-find resources on global textiles and traditional dress. Resources are multilingual and cover artistic, cultural, historical and technical information. The library also holds the personal archives of important textile scholars, as well as institutional archives related to the history of The Textile Museum Collection. Learn more about the library