Textile, woven

Description

This woven portrait of George Washington was created on a loom with a Jacquard attachment, a machine able to weave complex designs by following instructions fed into the device on a series of punch cards. The design is probably based on Gilbert Stuart’s 1796 Lansdowne portrait of Washington, with crossed oak and olive branches added to border the bottom part of his jacket. The plate below the portrait contains a woven recreation of Washington’s signature. This object is one of a large group transferred to Winterthur from the American Textile History Museum when it closed in 2017.