VFG member Lizzie Bramlett has evilly written about the Cooper Hewitt digital textile collection in her most recent blog entry. I was quickly sucked into the thousands of items ("25,629 objects") and found it hard to stop looking. Now I'll tempt the rest of you. After half an hour I decided to search for Leslie and DD Tillett. They had a brownstone on East 80th Street and the second floor was one long narrow room for hand screening fabric. I lived on the fourth floor, kind of a nanny for one of their children. I loved their fabrics and here is an example from @ 1970 from the Cooper Hewitt collection. As someone who has always loved libraries, the digital libraries online are so amazing.
Oh wow, this is amazing! I've seen rows and rows of 19th century fabric and lace sample books exhibited at the textile museum in St. Gallen - my fingers were just itching to look through them . I wish they would digitalize them - great idea!
oh my ...this concept is exactly why I have such a hard time parting with "good old things" .... keep thinking there must be some way to document them first!
25K+ items! Evil indeed, for Lizzie to blog about it, and you to post the link here! (But really, thank you, and also for the warning re size--I'm not even going to go near it till I have time tomorrow... ) Re the Leslie & TD Tillett connection--so cool! And... bet you were a very cool nanny...
This looks like something my Aunt had in her house. Not sure what is was on but it looks very familiar from my childhood.
The sample books are AMAZING! And such early ones, and so many of them! I loved the 20s/30s one from NY firm Herman Elsberg, which had dozens of swatches of metallic/lame brocades like those used on Art Deco opera coats... Swoon... https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18563835/images/page5
