The Cloth that Changed the World: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz was an exhibition created by the Royal Ontario Museum of Toronto Canada. I wanted to see the exhibit very badly, but a trip to Toronto really didn’t fit in my travel schedule. I had to make do with the exhibition catalog, until the St. Louis Art Museum decided to showcase the exhibit in a joint venture which is up through Jan 8th, 2023. My sister Kay and I made that trip happen.
It was worth every second of the drive across the state. We got to see some fantastic palampores, textiles, and Indian Chintz. The exhibit was wonderful about showing the textiles in groupings that were produced for different markets or countries. The St. Louis Art Museum also threw in an amazing surprise, two chintz quilts. The exhibition was already worth the trip, but frankly it would have been worth the drive to see the two glorious quilts owned by the museum.
Both quilts had rarely seen chintz fabric used, and one quilt had the famous John Hewson fabric in it. That quilt had the initials “E.C. 1809”, so we were puzzled why the title card had a date of 1807-09. The archivist was kind enough to look up the item and learned that the back had “EC 1807” in cross stitch on it. This type of marking is frequently found on sheets marked in this manner for the laundry. If you’d like to read more about John Hewson follow this link. If you'd like to get some Hewson reproduction fabric, we have it available in our shop at this link.) If you have time, it is definitely worth the trip to see the exhibit in person!
