V&A Museum textile collections

We regularly visit the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) textile collections to find inspiration and generally focus on the Indian displays and British Galleries. There are quite a lot of examples of wood block printing, going as far back as the early medieval period!

So let's run through what you can see in terms of wood block printed textiles in the Indian collections:

Here is an example of a 15th century fabric which was found in Egypt but was made in Gujarat in north-west India. These were exported widely from India and examples can be found that are around 900 years old.

Below is a block printed cotton for clothing from c.1772. This piece originated in Rajasthan, still the focus of the block printing industry today.

In the British Galleries, there is quite a large display of wood block printed furnishing fabrics from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Here are some examples which were produced in Lancashire.

Above: 1799 - an Oak leaf design commissioned by Richard Ovey who was a prominent textile merchant and would have been sold through his shop in Covent Garden, London.

Above: 1805-10 - Both of these designs are for soft furnishings also produced in Lancashire. These were given to the museum by the Calico Printers Association. 

As you can see, the Indian and British styles are very different although the production method of wood block printing is similar.

Alongside these examples are copper plate and roller printed fabrics but these are not our focus.