Seeing Red at the Quilt Museum
The Quilt Museum and Gallery’s latest exhibition focuses on the role of a particular dye used in their historic quilt collection (until 23 December)
Seeing Red: The Influence of Turkey Red Dye on Quiltmaking showcases quilts made out of cloth coloured with this strong red dye. Finding colourfast dyes was originally a challenge for British textile manufacturers – and was one of the reasons why Indian chintzes with their glowing, non-bleeding colours were so popular – and so the discovery of the secret for Turkey red in 1785 was hugely important. It was two Glasgow mill owners, George Mackintosh and David Dale, who first worked out the recipe in Britain with the help of a Frenchman, Pierre Jacques Papillon, specially hired to show them how. Their success transformed the British textile industry and Turkey red cloth became highly popular, being used both for furnishing and dress fabrics, and ultimately recycled into quilts. And it’s a selection of these quilts which are on show here. Many of them emphasise the strength of the new colour by contrasting it with other colours, especially blocks of white, in the process underlining it’s colourfast nature – they must have been washed hundreds of times and yet the colours remain bright with no signs of the red running into the white areas of cloth.
www.quiltmuseum.org.uk
