Bizarre silks are a style of figured

silk Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons. The best-known silk is obtained from the coc ...

fabrics Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...

popular in Europe in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Bizarre silks are characterized by large-scale,

asymmetrical Asymmetry is the absence of, or a violation of, symmetry (the property of an object being invariant to a transformation, such as reflection). Symmetry is an important property of both physical and abstract systems and it may be displayed in pre ...

patterns featuring geometrical shapes and stylized leaves and flowers, influenced by a wave of Asian textiles and decorative objects reaching the European market in these decades. Bizarre silks were used for both clothing and furnishings.Takedo and Spilker (2010), p. 209Takedo and Spilker (2010), p. 52 As a description, the term was first used by Dr. Vilhelm Sloman in the title of a book, ''Bizarre Designs in Silks'' published in 1953 in Copenhagen.

Development

The modern name "bizarre silk" reflects the bold colors and lavish use of textured gold and silver threads as well as the distinctive elongated asymmetrical patterns of silk fabrics

woven Woven fabric is any textile formed by weaving. Woven fabrics are often created on a loom, and made of many threads woven on a warp and a weft. Technically, a woven fabric is any fabric made by interlacing two or more threads at right angles to on ...

in France, Italy and Britain from about 1695 to 1720.Sewell (2010), p. 497 Woven silk designs of the 1670s had featured patterns of decorated stripes, but in the 1680s and 1690s these were replaced by the earliest "proto-bizarre" patterns, which featured exotic elements based on artifacts imported from the

East Indies The East Indies (or simply the Indies), is a term used in historical narratives of the Age of Discovery. The Indies refers to various lands in the East or the Eastern hemisphere, particularly the islands and mainlands found in and around t ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

and

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

"indiscriminately combined with the current European taste for bulbous

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

scrolls."Rothstein (1994), p. 11 At their most extreme, from 1700 to 1705, bizarre silks feature "some of the most extraordinary shapes to be introduced into silk design" before the development of

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

in the early 20th century. Characteristics of these designs include diagonal emphasis with stretched and distorted botanical motifs. The development of bizarre designs among the English silk weavers of

Spitalfields Spitalfields is a district in the East End of London and within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The area is formed around Commercial Street (on the A1202 London Inner Ring Road) and includes the locale around Brick Lane, Christ Church, ...

can be dated quite closely based on surviving textiles and documents. Around 1707 and 1708, bizarre designs combined distorted florals with architectural elements such as arches, canopies, pergolas, and diagonal fences. From 1709–10, the scale of the patterns was reduced and elements of ''

chinoiserie (, ; loanword from French '' chinoiserie'', from '' chinois'', "Chinese"; ) is the European interpretation and imitation of Chinese and other East Asian artistic traditions, especially in the decorative arts, garden design, architecture, lite ...

'' and ''

japonaiserie ''Japonisme'' is a French term that refers to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design among a number of Western European artists in the nineteenth century following the forced reopening of foreign trade with Japan in 1858. Japon ...

'' appeared. After 1710, the bizarre shapes are deemphasized in favor of "increasingly profuse semi-naturalistic flowers".Rothstein (1994), p. 12 The bizarre period ended with the new fashion for lace-patterned textiles and naturalistic florals in the 1720s.

Technique and applications

Bizarre silks were woven on the

drawloom A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but t ...

, and the colorful patterns were

brocade Brocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in colored silks and sometimes with gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word "broccoli", comes from Italian ''broccato'' meaning "embos ...

d or created with floating pattern wefts (

lampas Lampas is a type of luxury fabric with a background weft (a "ground weave") typically in taffeta with supplementary wefts (the "pattern wefts") laid on top and forming a design, sometimes also with a " brocading weft". Lampas is typically woven i ...

). At the height of the fashion, the average repeat of a bizarre silk pattern was 27 inches (69 cm) high and ten inches (26 cm) wide, repeating twice across the width of the fabric. These large-scale designs were perfectly suited to the popular

mantua Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard language, Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and ''comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the Province of Mantua, province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture ...

, a woman's gown with long, flowing lines and few seams, and were also popular for men's waistcoats and furnishings.

Gallery

The strong reds, yellows and oranges in textile design drawings of this period are codes for various types of metallic threads. File:Man's silk waistcoat with sleeves c 1715.jpg, Bizarre silk waistcoat with sleeves, France, c. 1715.

LACMA The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961, ...

M.2007.211.40 File:Mantua MET DT6544.jpg, Detail of a salmon pink bizarre silk brocade mantua, c. 1708.

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

File:Charles Baudouin design for woven silk textile 1707.jpg, Christopher Baudouin, design for woven silk textile, 1707.

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

. File:James Leman design for woven silk textile 1710.jpg, James Leman, design for woven silk textile, 1710. Victoria and Albert Museum. File:Joseph Dandridge design for woven silk textile 1718.jpg, Joseph Dandridge, design for woven silk textile, 1718. Victoria and Albert Museum.

Notes

References

* Brown, Clare. ''Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century from the Victoria and Albert Museum'', Thams and Hudson, 1996, . * Takeda, Sharon Sadako, and Kaye Durland Spilker. ''Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700 - 1915'', LACMA/Prestel USA 2010, . * Rothstein, Natalie. ''Woven Textile Design in Britain to 1750'' (''The Victoria and Albert Museum's Textile Collections'' series), Canopy Books, 1994, . * Sewell, Dennita. "Mantua." In Valerie Steele, editor. ''The Berg Companion to Fashion.'' Berg Publishers, 2010, . * (in German) Ackermann, Hans Christoph. ''Seidengewebe des 18. Jahrhunderts I. Bizarre Seiden''. Abegg-Stiftung, 2000, .

External links

*
Mantua in salmon-pink and green bizarre silk, 1708

James Leman's album
has designs for a number of bizarre silks,

Victoria & Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

.
Views of the exhibition ''Bizarre Silks: An Exoticism from around 1700'', Abegg Foundation (2000)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bizarre Silk Silk Textile design Baroque