Bedcover
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.George Ormerod produced this block-printed masterpiece in 1752. The bedcover—dedicated to an English East India Company merchant and his wife—is the earliest example of an English printed cotton attributed to a specific printer. The level of detail and the application of multiple colors belie the notion that European printed textile designs were crude before the spread of copperplate printing technology a few years later. Ormerod clearly modeled his design on imported Indian armorial palampores. The individual motifs are a combination of the classical and the exotic, including the Roman god Mercury, elephants, lions, and Chinese archers who appear in the border and the central field.
Artwork Details
- Title: Bedcover
- Date: 1752
- Geography: Made in Surrey, Wallington, England
- Culture: England (Wallington, Surrey)
- Medium: Cotton (block printed and painted)
- Dimensions: 105 x 99 in (266.7 x 251.5 cm)
- Credit Line: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of A. S. W. Rosenbach and Philip H. Rosenbach, 1951
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing