Thomas Stevens | |
|---|---|
 Thomas Stevens in 1888 | |
| Born | 1828 Foleshill, Warwickshire, England |
| Died | 24 October 1888 (aged 59–60) London, England |
| Resting place | London Road Cemetery, Coventry |
| Occupation | Weaver |
| Known for | Inventing the Stevengraph |
| Children | 7, including Thomas Inger Stevens |
Thomas Stevens (1828–1888) was a 19th-century weaver in Coventry, famous for his innovation of the stevengraph, a woven silk picture.
In the 19th century the town of Coventry, England, was the centre of a ribbon weaving industry. Thomas Stevens was born in Foleshill, just to the north of Coventry, in 1828 to a relatively poor family. [1] Stevens worked for Pears and Franklin, a local ribbon weavers in Coventry, and by 1854 had created his own ribbon firm. [1] In 1860, however, the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty was signed; this free trade treaty introduced new competition into the industry, leading to a collapse in the local ribbon economy and a huge loss of employment in Coventry. [2]
Stevens had considerable experience of experimenting with the Jacquard loom and responded to the local recession by trying to develop new products. He had invented a way of using the programmable loom to weave colourful pictures from silk. [1] By 1862, Stevens could produce four different designs. He attempted to appeal to the mass market, selling his products between six pence and fifteen shillings each [3] in order to stimulate a demand that would keep his workers in employment. [4] Some of these pictures were used for bookmarks, greetings cards and specialised products for the Admiralty. [1]
Business boomed and Stevens acquired two larger factories in turn; by 1875 he was calling his product the "Stevengraph", named after himself. [1] He expanded on his designs to include He exhibited internationally in America, France and Holland, winning some 30 medals and diplomas. [1] In 1878 Stevens moved to London and began to mount his Stevengraphs as framed pictures - by the late 1880s Stevens had over 900 different designs, [3] including portraits, local scenes, British and foreign royalty, famous buildings, historical events, classical subjects, sports scenes, nursery rhymes and locomotion. [5]
In 1888 Stevens died following a throat operation in London, and was buried in London Road Cemetery, Coventry. [6]
By the 1930s, Stevengraphs were considered collectable items, but the hobby was considered eccentric and mainly confined to female collectors. During the Second World War Coventry was attacked by German bombers; on 14 November 1940 the Coventry Blitz occurred, destroying the Stevens factory [4] and the records of the Stevengraphs. In the late 1950s it emerged that Henry Stephens, a relative of Thomas, had saved one of the pattern books the night before the attack and kept it in safe storage. He later donated it to the Coventry City Council, who in turn entrusted it with the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. Stevengraphs became valuable, with more male collectors entering the hobby. [7] Prices rose, particularly for unusual or rarer images less popular during the Victorian period.
A large collection of Stevens' work and his pattern book is still held at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, [1] [8] with Stevengraphs also held in collections at the Bodleian Library , [9] the Science Museum, [10] the Victoria and Albert Museum [11] and the National Trust property Greenway House, near Brixham, Devon. [12]
Lady Godiva, in Old English Godgifu, was a late Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who is relatively well documented as the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and a patron of various churches and monasteries.
A ribbon or riband is a thin band of material, typically cloth but also plastic or sometimes metal, used primarily as decorative binding and tying. Cloth ribbons are made of natural materials such as silk, cotton, and jute and of synthetic materials, such as polyester, nylon, and polypropylene. Ribbon is used for useful, ornamental, and symbolic purposes. Cultures around the world use ribbon in their hair, around the body, and as ornament on non-human animals, buildings, and packaging. Some popular fabrics used to make ribbons are satin, organza, sheer, silk, velvet, and grosgrain.
A Persian carpet, Persian rug, or Iranian carpet is a heavy textile made for a wide variety of utilitarian and symbolic purposes and produced in Iran, for home use, local sale, and export. Carpet weaving is an essential part of Persian culture and Iranian art. Within the group of Oriental rugs produced by the countries of the "rug belt", the Persian carpet stands out by the variety and elaborateness of its manifold designs.
An oriental rug is a heavy textile made for a wide variety of utilitarian and symbolic purposes and produced in "Oriental countries" for home use, local sale, and export.
A bookmark is a thin marking tool, commonly made of card, leather, or fabric, used to keep track of a reader's progress in a book and allow the reader to easily return to where the previous reading session ended. Alternate materials for bookmarks are paper, metals like silver and brass, silk, wood, cord (sewing), and plastic. Some books may have one or more bookmarks made of woven ribbon sewn into the binding. Furthermore, other bookmarks incorporate a page-flap that enables them to be clipped on a page.
Anatolian rug or Turkish carpet is a term of convenience, commonly used today to denote rugs and carpets woven in Anatolia and its adjacent regions. Geographically, its area of production can be compared to the territories which were historically dominated by the Ottoman Empire. It denotes a knotted, pile-woven floor or wall covering which is produced for home use, local sale, and export, and religious purpose. Together with the flat-woven kilim, Anatolian rugs represent an essential part of the regional culture, which is officially understood as the Culture of Turkey today, and derives from the ethnic, religious and cultural pluralism of one of the most ancient centres of human civilisation.
Maya textiles (k’apak) are the clothing and other textile arts of the Maya peoples, indigenous peoples of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize. Women have traditionally created textiles in Maya society, and textiles were a significant form of ancient Maya art and religious beliefs. They were considered a prestige good that would distinguish the commoners from the elite. According to Brumfiel, some of the earliest weaving found in Mesoamerica can date back to around 1000–800 BCE.
Herbert Art Gallery & Museum is a museum, art gallery, records archive, learning centre, media studio and creative arts facility on Jordan Well, Coventry, England.
Henry William Eaton, 1st Baron Cheylesmore was a British businessman, Conservative politician, and art collector.
Anna Maria Garthwaite was an English textile designer known for creating vivid floral designs for silk fabrics hand-woven in Spitalfields, London, in the mid-18th century. Garthwaite was acknowledged as one of the premiere English designers of her day. Many of her original designs in watercolours have survived, and silks based on these designs have been identified in portraiture and in costume collections in England and abroad.
Joseph Dandridge, was an English silk-pattern designer of Huguenot descent, a natural history illustrator, an amateur naturalist specialising in entomology, and a leading figure in the Society of Aurelians of which he was a founder member.
English embroidery includes embroidery worked in England or by English people abroad from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day. The oldest surviving English embroideries include items from the early 10th century preserved in Durham Cathedral and the 11th century Bayeux Tapestry, if it was worked in England. The professional workshops of Medieval England created rich embroidery in metal thread and silk for ecclesiastical and secular uses. This style was called Opus Anglicanum or "English work", and was famous throughout Europe.
Kerman carpets are one of the traditional classifications of Persian carpets. Kerman is both a city and a province located in south central Iran. The term also sometimes describes a type which may have been made elsewhere. Typical manufacturing techniques use an asymmetrical knot on cotton foundation, but less frequent examples incorporate silk or part silk piles, or silk foundations with wool pile.
Bizarre silks are a style of figured silk fabrics popular in Europe in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Bizarre silks are characterized by large-scale, asymmetrical patterns featuring geometrical shapes and stylized leaves and flowers, influenced by a wave of Asian textiles and decorative objects reaching the European market in these decades. Bizarre silks were used for both clothing and furnishings. As a description, the term was first used by Dr. Vilhelm Sloman in the title of a book, Bizarre Designs in Silks published in 1953 in Copenhagen.
Cash's, or J. & J. Cash Ltd., is a company in Coventry, England, founded in 1846, that manufactures woven name tapes and other woven products and is known for formerly making ribbons.
Stevengraphs are pictures woven from silk, originally created by Thomas Stevens in the 19th century. They were popular collectable items again during the revival of interest in Victoriana in the 1960s and 1970s.
Congleton, Macclesfield, Bollington and Stockport, England, were traditionally silk-weaving towns. Silk was woven in Cheshire from the late 1600s. The handloom weavers worked in the attic workshops in their own homes. Macclesfield was famous for silk buttons manufacture. The supply of silk from Italy was precarious and some hand throwing was done, giving way after 1732 to water-driven mills, which were established in Stockport and Macclesfield.
Vrindavani Vastra is a drape woven by Assamese weavers led by Mathuradas Burha Aata during 16th century under the guidance of Srimanta Sankardeva, a Vaishnavite saint and scholar who lived in present-day Assam. The lead weaver Mathuradas Burha Aata a disciple of Sri Sri Madhabdev, who was the first Satradhikar of the Barpeta Satra. Mathuradas Burha Aata along with his 12 assistant weavers wove the Brindavani Bastra. The large drape illustrates the childhood activities of Lord Krishna in Vrindavan. Parts of the original Vrindavani vastra are presently owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Musee Guimet in Paris. The piece of cloth demonstrates the skillful weaving methods developed during medieval times and such complexity is rarely seen in present-day Assam.
A man's waistcoat with sleeves of 1747 is a rare example of eighteenth century clothing for which the garment itself, the original textile design, and a dated record of both the designer and the master weaver who made the fabric have also survived. The waistcoat is part of the collection of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, number C.I.66.14.2.
William Morris (1834-1898), a founder of the British Arts and Crafts movement, sought to restore the prestige and methods of hand-made crafts, including textiles, in opposition to the 19th century tendency toward factory-produced textiles. With this goal in mind, he created his own workshop and designed dozens of patterns for hand-produced woven and printed cloth, upholstery, and other textiles.
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