RICH AND RARE

This is a detail of one of the palampores at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, where they have a very fine collection and their book illustrating many called Chintz by Rosemary Crill their curator. This one is dated approx 1720 from the Coromandel Coast, India, and was made to be a bedcover or wall hanging. These designs have been famously copied by Braquenie (French fabric makers) and some of the details repeated and copied in our own Paisley shawls and other clothing and fabrics. Many of the flowers have petals with elaborate patterns taken from Persian and Chinese flower designs and these were adapted for sales to European countries via the Silk and Trade Routes, and sold in France, Holland and Britain where they were highly sought after and admired. Despite bans on their importation, to support home trade, they were even more highly prized for being illegal and subject to heavy fines! I have recently seen and handled three very different examples of these splendid works of art, and all have now been sold for very high prices. SEE earlier blog Palampore and another to follow, later!