Introduction to Indian textiles
Textiles have a long and distinguished history in the Indian sub-continent. The technique of mordant dyeing, which gives intense colours that do not fade, has been used by …
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Collecting South Asian textiles at the V&A
The V&A's Indian collections have their origins in the East India Company's Museum, or Oriental Repository, founded in 1791at the Company's headquarters in Leadenhall Stree…
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Consuming South Asian textiles
Indian textiles were valued for a variety of reasons in 19th-century Britain. They were prized as symbolic trophies of Britain's empire in India and examples of its materia…
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Circulating South Asian textiles
While recent histories have emphasised the role of imperial authority in shaping the V&A's South Asian collections, the Museum's original objective was the general improvem…
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Indian textiles & Empire: Caspar Purdon Clarke
Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke (1846-1911) was an architect, archaeologist and museum director. In 1882 he was sent to India with a budget of £5000 to buy objects for the museum'…
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Indian textiles & Empire: John Forbes Watson
John Forbes Watson's (1827-1892) idea for 'portable industrial museums', led to the publication of The Collections of the Textile Manufactures of India in 1866, eighteen vo…
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Indian textiles & Empire: Owen Jones
The 1852 Great Exhibition, held in London's Hyde Park, was the first of a series of international exhibitions to be held in major world cities. It provided the British publ…
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British Asian Style: Fashion and Textiles
South Asian textiles have shaped British fashion and dress for centuries, from the fashionable chintzes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, t…
Buy nowEvent - William Morris Textiles and Wallpapers
Sat 15 June 2013 14:00
STUDY DAY: Artist, writer, socialist and conservationist, William Morris is best-known today as a designer of flat patterns.
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