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Left: This
textile depicts a popular French opera-ballet, The Caravan of
Cairo, first performed at the Fontainebleau Palace in 1783
and enjoyed by Marie Antoinette. Set in Cairo against a backdrop
of war, it is the love story of two slaves: a Frenchman and the
kidnapped daughter of an American Indian chief.
Middle: The Egyptian images on this copper-plate-printed cotton are based on engravings by the French painter, Louis-François Cassas. In early 19th-century France, Napoleon’s 1798 expedition aroused interest in past and present Egyptian culture. Right: This exotic floral motif is Indian-inspired, yet illustrates the 1830s taste for the subdued colors that textile scholars call “drab.” Rather than meticulously copying Eastern designs, artisans in the “novelty-hungry West” would often incorporate elements of contemporary fashion. 
November 27, 2007 -
May 7, 2008
Left: La Fosse
Lionet á Montpellier, La Caravane du Caire, bed curtain,
plate-printed linen and cotton, c.1785, France, 2005.64.4,
museum purchase
Middle: Manufacture de Jouy, The Monuments of Egypt, Copper plate-printed cotton, c.1805, France, 82.146.6, gift of Stroheim & Romann, Inc. Right: Cotton roller-print, c.1835, England, X321.29A, anonymous donation, photograph by Irving Solero
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