Woodblock-printed fabrics - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2000 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

At her coronation in June 1838, Queen Victoria wore the sumptuous robes depicted in the portrait by Thomas Sully illustrated on page 354 of this issue. Sully's daughter Blanch wrote of visiting the royal robemaker and posing in Victoria's coronation robes so that her father could accurately paint the costume. More than a century later, when Victoria's descendant Elizabeth II ascended the throne in 1952, she wore robes of hand-loomed velvet made by the firm now known as Lee Jofa. The company's origin can be traced to 1823 when the firm Johnson and Faulkner (Jofa derives from the combination of the first two letters of each surname) was founded in New York City by the Englishman George Johnson. In 1965 Johnson and Faulkner was acquired by one of England's oldest textile producing companies, Arthur H. Lee and Sons, which was founded by Arthur H. Lee in 1888. His family had been in the industry since the early 1700s, when Queen Anne was on the throne. Lee was dedicated to preserving the tradition of woodblock-pri nted textiles in an age when textile production was increasingly mechanized. Today under the ownership of Kravet Fabrics, Incorporated, Lee Jofa still maintains the same dedication to producing these labor-intensive and beautiful fabrics, some of which are made from wooden blocks carved more than one hundred years ago. The process itself is known to date from at least 1676, when William Sherwin of West Ham, near London, received a patent "for a new way for printing...and stayning."

Accomplished hand-blocking demands both the eye of the artist and the discerning skills of the seasoned craftsman. During the process, each color of the pattern is applied using a single block, and there are examples that are so complex they require as many as sixty-four blocks. The earliest blocks were made of wood into which a design was carved. These were supplanted by blocks into which metal (usually copper or brass) was inlaid. With those blocks, the printed design is more precise and the block can be used more often before it needs to be replaced. Finally, felt was applied to the larger motifs in a block to better control the spread and volume of the dye and give the finished textile a solid and even coverage of color. Blocks were fashioned from a variety of woods including box, holly pear, walnut, lime, and ash. They were then often laminated to oak for increased stability. Subtlety in color is achieved by a process in which one block overlaps areas made by another, yielding a third color. These are k nown as fall-ons, because one color falls upon another.

A distinct advantage to hand-blocked fabrics is that there is no limit to the vertical repeat of the pattern in the finished fabric, which, in mechanical processes, is restricted by the size of the machine. The Tree of Life print illustrated at right depicts a wide range of flora and fauna because it has a ninety-nine inch vertical repeat. Different effects are also achieved by the type of fabric that receives the dye. Cotton has a propensity to hold more color and the outline of motifs is therefore more crisp. Linen (or knen blended with other fabrics) tends be more absorbent so that the boundaries between colors are less distinct. Even the most highly skilled artisan occasionally will spill a drop of color--an irrevocable mistake that lends charm and personality and signals the fact that the fabric is handmade.

The Lee Joffa woodblock-printed collection includes examples ranging in date from the nineteenth century to the 1920s and 1930s. For information about the fabrics and the locations of the company's showrooms, which are open to the trade only, telephone 800-453 -3563.