Materials and Making

Introduced from the 1780s, roller or cylinder printing represented a mechanised improvement on the older technique of block printing, producing the final patterned fabric far more quickly and cheaply. Block printing laboriously pressed each individual block onto the fabric, but rollers allowed the textile to be drawn through in one continuous process. More rapid production ensured that cottons, in particular, became much cheaper, and thus more accessible to a wider market. These single colour, monochrome, patterns were the simplest to make as the printer did not have to match up different colours, and they are typical of the type of fabric chosen by servants and working women right through to the middle of the nineteenth century.

By family tradition, this dress is said to have been worn by a member of a farming family from Irlam in Cheshire. Roller printed cottons for dresses were produced in thousands of Lancashire mills by the 1810s, and although this is a simple example, shading has been added to give interest. Such dresses were easily washed and laundered, providing a hygienic contrast to the silk gowns fashionable only a decade or two earlier, or to the woollen dresses worn by labouring women.

Full item descriptions:

"dress" [1970.200]

Related Themes:

Roller Printing
19th Century Women's Fashion