Drawing

This design for a woven silk dress fabric has been copied onto oiled paper, once transparent but now brown and opaque, that worked like tracing paper. The copied design was then painted in bodycolour. This was a method of reproducing a design and its colour scheme, and was probably done for reference purposes.

The design is for a type of weave known as a tobine in English, and as cannellé in French. A textured, ribbed effect is made by a warp additional to the ground warp, and can be combined with other effects such as brocading. The flowers, leaves, and feather-like shapes in this design were probably intended to be brocaded with coloured silk threads.