Printed Textile Document, "Peacock Among the Ruins"

DateLate 19th Century

MediumCotton

DimensionsOverall: 112 × 55in. (284.5 × 139.7cm)

Credit LineGift of Terry Tickhill Terrell

Object number2022-60(S)

DescriptionThis is a rectangular printed textile fragment of "Peacock in the Ruins" in blue. The textile panel depicts a pastoral scene with a seated shepherd playing a flute and a woman spinning with a distaff amount broken columns. There are various farm animals at the edge of a stream including a dog, ram, sheep, and cow. Dogs chasing a stag separate this scene from the one below, in which a peacock, hen, rooster, chicks, and ducks are seen near a carved urn on a pedestal and a ruined tomb. The textile has an irregular shape at top and is made up of two panels about 24" selvage width, matching seamed. The selvage has white cords. The textile has four raw edges.
Label TextCopperplate-printed cottons with large-scale pictorial designs were popular choices for furniture covers and bed hangings in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The original designer of this pattern, Robert Jones at the Old Ford factory in London, combined a number of design sources, some from as early as the mid-seventeenth century, for his large-scale design of "Peacock in the Ruins." Numerous copies were made, including this possibly French late nineteenth-century version.