The Psychedelic World of Textile Dyes in Spitalfields: The V&A Leman Silk

In 2016 the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired a panel of brocaded silk dress fabric in immaculate condition woven from one of the few surviving patterns drawn by James Leman, a leading 18th-century silk designer and master weaver in Spitalfields, London. The acquisition offered an illuminating view into a particular aspect of the cosmopolitan manufacturing world in which Leman operated. The silk’s pristine appearance seems likely to reflect its state when it came off the loom in around 1709, spending most of the following 300 years unused. Its dyes, still exceptionally vibrant, provided us with the rare opportunity to investigate their composition unaffected by the usual ravages of time. Loose thread ends from the reverse of the brocade, one sample per shade of colour, were analysed and traditional dyes were identified: indigo for the blues; cochineal and annatto for the crimson; safflower for the pinks; weld (with or without annatto) for the yellows and a mixture of indigo and weld for the greens. The presence of annatto and safflower suggests that the silk should only be exposed to light in a controlled manner, to avoid fading. Overall, the results of the dye analysis reveal the trade links that London, and in particular the dye-works which provided coloured silk yarns to the weavers of Spitalfields, had with the rest of the world: weld is likely to have been cultivated in Europe; indigo could have originated from both Asia and South America; cochineal was from South America and safflower was originally from the Near East. The cultivation of annatto, originally from South America, had already spread to southern Europe well before Leman was active.