Manuscript order

From the 1790s through the first 20 years of the 19th century, the finest and most expensive printed furnishings were polychrome woodblock-printed cottons, the technique used on the samples here. These fabrics appear to have been chosen for both bed hangings and window curtains; in this period it was particularly fashionable for the different furnishings used in a room, including window curtains and upholstery fabric, to match or complement each other.

This document is likely to have been an estimate for the furnishings of a house; it bears the client's name, Mr Robinson of Winchmore Hill, but not that of the upholsterer who drew it up. Winchmore Hill is to the north of London, still a village in the late 18th century, but experiencing much new building from the 1770s. Woodblock printed cottons had widespread popularity in the period, and would have been considered particularly suitable for furnishing villas and genteel cottages, where more elaborate or heavier materials could have been obtrusive .