Dress fabric

This length of woven silk was intended for clothing. It might have been chosen for a woman's gown, a man's waistcoat or a nightgown, worn informally at home. The complexity of its woven structure would have made it expensive; technically, it is a brocaded tissue. The technique of brocading allowed different colours to be introduced into the pattern of a fabric in specific, sometimes very small areas. It was a more laborious process for the weaver than using patterning wefts running from selvedge to selvedge, but the resulting effect could be much more varied and lively.

The distinctive pattern of this silk, in which the design repeats as a mirror image of itself on either side of a central axis, and includes a lace-like trail through the background, was highly fashionable in the 1720s.