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Description
This ribbed silk curtain was made in Europe, probably England, sometime prior to 1755. It is comprised of five vertical panels bordered on one end by a long horizontal band. The silk is a moire, meaning it has a wavy, watered pattern created through a process called calendering. The curtain’s edges are bound with patterned wool tape. According to the donor, this curtain was brought to America from England by her second great-grandmother in 1755 and was originally used as a door and window curtain. The lack of any evidence of use with a hanging mechanism, as well as the binding of all edges, suggests that it may have been transformed into a bedcover at a later date. This object is one of a large group transferred to Winterthur from the American Textile History Museum when it closed in 2017.