Floral fabrics are textiles decorated with flowers, leaves and plant forms, whether printed, woven, embroidered or painted. They include glazed chintzes, printed cottons and linens, floral silks and damasks, crewelwork hangings and tapestry-woven upholstery, and they have long been central to the English way of decorating.
Brightly painted and printed Indian cottons, imported in large numbers by the East India Company from the seventeenth century, created a passion for floral textiles in Europe and led to the development of block and later roller printing in Britain and France. Eighteenth-century silks woven at Spitalfields carried elegant naturalistic sprays, while Regency and Victorian chintzes featured roses, peonies and trailing flowers on light or dark grounds. In the later nineteenth century William Morris produced hand-blocked and woven designs, such as his celebrated Strawberry Thief, that combined flowers and foliage in dense, ordered patterns. In the twentieth century faded floral chintzes became the hallmark of the English country-house look. Antique floral fabrics are valued for their colour, design and rarity, though fading, fragility and splitting are common problems. Even small surviving lengths are often used for cushions, lampshades or framed panels.
