Textile Designs; Two Hundred Years of European and American Patterns Organized by Motif, Style, Color, Layout, and Period

"Textile Designs is a dazzling, informative fabric encyclopedia of archival beauty. It is a necessary tool for the fashion industry, schools, and libraries."

—Women's Wear Daily

"An iconography of textile motifs and a vocabulary of pattern. . . . Highly recommended." —Choice

Never before have printed textiles been celebrated in a book of this magnitude. Now in paperback, Textile Designs is the indispensable sourcebook for the colorful patterned materials that have been used in fashion and interiors for the past 200 years. Organized not chronologically or geographically but by motif—Floral, Geometric, Conversational, Ethnic, and Art Movements and Period Styles—this bible of textile design presents a stunning cross-section of the materials of everyday life: printed calicos and cottons, flowered cretonnes and chintzes, polka-dot silks and foulards. With its informative text and pattern names provided not only in English but also in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese, this is a must-have for everyone interested in color and pattern.

This exhaustive 1991 catalog of designs features 1,823 color illustrations. Patterns are divided into floral, geometric, conversational, and ethnic and by movements and period styles. A nice extra is a table of contents and a brief introduction presented in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese in addition to English. As LJ's reviewer initially observed, "this book is a colorful confection, but it is also a thoughtful and informative analysis of the artistic choices that are subconscious interpretations of the moods, longings, and aspirations of humankind."
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