Another Reason to Visit New York City: Wedding Bed Covers, Tapestries, Quilts and Period Clothing
By Jill Norgren
As daylight dwindles and the vivid colors of nature recede, what could be more pleasurable this autumn than a museum exhibit packed with vibrant color?
In New York City the Metropolitan Museum of Art has opened a stunningly beautiful exhibition, Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800. According to curators, the show surveys "the international transmittal of design from the 16th to the early 19th century through the medium of textiles." Trade in textiles followed the search for spice routes to the east. Textiles, sometimes used as currency for spices and other goods, shipped out on various types of vessels from India and other parts of Asia to Europe, as well as making their way between India and East and Southeast Asia, Europe to the east, and later west to North and South America.
Jacket second half of 18th century. Dutch, cotton, lenth: 26 in. (66cm). The pattern of the cotton textile from which this jacket, known as a caraco, is made is nearly identical to another cotton with a pink ground in the Metropolitan's collection, made by the French firm of J. R. Wetter. This Indian chintz is probably a copy of that French textile. By the late eighteenth century, Indian cotton manufacturers were increasingly producing patterns closely based on Western prototypes and fewer of the exotic hybrid florals that had seduced Europeans since the seventeenth century.
Interwoven Globe employs ten galleries to exhibit 134 works, two-thirds drawn from the museum's permanent collection. The central role played by the world’s oceans to the development of a global trade in textiles is underscored in the first gallery where a unique 17th quilt depicts a three mast ship. The artist must have hoped to express man’s belief in his mastery of the seas. But the exhibition does not dwell on the dangers of maritime life. Rather, the visitor encounters beautiful wedding bed covers; tapestries appear in many of the galleries along with other quilts and hangings. Among the most fascinating pieces in the show is one illustrating armed European conflict in South India.
The exhibition galleries are organized according to geography and themes. Interwoven Globe begins with the textile trade that Portugal developed with China and India and concludes with a gallery devoted to colonial North American showing textiles imported from China and India. Thematically, one of the most interesting rooms displays objects made for religious observance including chasubles, a Torah ark curtain, and a temple hanging produced for Hindu devotees in Ceylon.
18th century, Spanish culture. Cotton, block printed. Gift of Estate of James Hazen Hyde, 1959. In this Spanish printed cotton, "America" is a Native American female supported on a litter by two young men in a stylized tropical environment. In the sixteenth century, Europeans began personifying the Americas as an exotic native woman. The phrase Triumfa España en las Americas suggests that the designer was attempting to reassure viewers of Spain's dominance in its American colonies.
Interwoven Globe is a large exhibition begging hours of a visitor's attention. Walk through it first without reading the explanatory signs. Enjoy the diversity of the objects as well as their beauty without distraction. Once familiar visually with all that the exhibition has to offer, begin again, studying the signs and considering the objects as expressions of the global artistic exchanges made possible by the golden age of European maritime navigation.
This exhibition runs until January 5. 2014. Illustration captions from the Met.
©2013 Jill Norgren for SeniorWomen.com
More Articles
- The Beige Book Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions By Federal Reserve District Wednesday November 30, 2022
- A la Frank Sinatra: "Come Fly With Me", U.S. Department of Transportation Airline Customer Service Dashboard
- Adrienne G. Cannon Writes: Those Lonely Days
- Annandale-on-Hudson, New York ... With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972 - 1985
- From the CDC: When You've Been Fully Vaccinated You Can ........For the 30,000,000 Who Have Been Vaccinated
- Jill Norgren Reviews a New Inspector Gamache Mystery: All the Devils Are Here
- FactCheck Post: The Facts on Trump’s Travel Restrictions: "We Don't Have a Travel Ban; We Have a Travel Band-Aid Right Now"
- Heard of the Novel Corona Virus Before? The New England Journal of Medicine's Free Reading Lists and the W.H.O.'s Statement
- Horse, Horse, Tiger, Tiger; It's the Tone of the Character That Makes the Word
- Worth Revisiting: Joan Cannon's Review of Islandia, a Novel of Remarkable Length Nowadays