Dress fabric

Dress fabric of brocaded silk. The silk has a white ground and is decorated with coloured floral sprays. The pattern is brocaded with short stemmed floral sprays in bright contrasting shades of pink, blue and red matched against yellow and peach coloured silks. The stems are a dark olive green and certain of the flowers are made more striking with the addition of black. The sprays are rendered by the use of plate silver thread and a combination thread of plain and plate silver. The white tabby ground has a flush meandering pattern of sprays of berries, and the larger ones are picked out with small blobs of brocaded silver plate thread.

The piece is a loom width with two narrow self-coloured selvages of one cord. The repeat is 16.75 inches long and there is only one repeat to the width. There is a horizontal seam near the top, and there is a 1.25 inch hand-stitched hem at the bottom.