Embroidered Panel, 1680–1710
England
Silk embroidery on linen ground
Lent by Cora Ginsburg LLC

Oversized birds, fantastic flowers, and jaunty figures enliven this hand-stitched panel. Rather than telling a specific story or depicting a particular scene, English Chinoiserie sought to capture the exoticism of the Far East. A professional London embroiderer probably copied the outline of each image from a published pattern book and then filled them in using colorful silk threads. This embroidered bed-hanging emulates imported Indian "chintz" textiles, whose all-over printed patterns already had been popular in Europe for several decades.

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