April 4, 1939
On Thursday, April 6th, the Library of the Brooklyn Museum will open an exhibition of the Textile Arts from Ancient to Modern Times to run through April 30th. This exhibition is composed of plate and book material from the Brooklyn Museum Library illustrating pattern, design and technique in textile weaving with special emphasis on the influence of Oriental motifs and treatment in Western fabrics.
This exhibition includes photographs of Ancient Egyptian scenes of weaving drawn from paintings in the Tomb of Beni Hasan; photographs from Falke’s “Decorative Silks” of garments and woven stuffs worn by the Greeks; facsimile reproductions of silks from Byzantium, Persia, Sicily, Lucca, Venice and Lyons, and of Coptic and French Gothic tapestries; and periodical illustrations of present day fabrics. Also included in this exhibition is a display devoted to the methods of printing---hand block printing and the process of copper engraving on cotton as discovered in 1760 by Oberkampf at Jouy. Another display illustrates the technique of the three basic weaves of all textile fabrics.
This exhibition is designed to call attention to the collections of the Brooklyn Museum Library and to the facilities for research and study there. Some designers and schools are already using the very comprehensive resources of the General Art Reference Library, and there has been a marked increase in the number of special students working in the Charles Edwin Wilbour Memorial Library of Egyptology. The Library collections are also heavily used by the educational staff of the Museum. There has, however, been no previous opportunity to call the attention of the general public to the very rich resources of the Library in plates and other illustrative material. This exhibition is the second of a series of Library exhibitions planned to demonstrate those resources.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1939. 4-7_1939/Exhibition, 173. View Original
