The fabric of history

If cotton checks and canvas stripes have you yearning for something a little more whimsical, take a trip back to turn-of-the-century England, when elaborately designed textiles and nature-inspired patterns rivaled paintings in terms of sheer beauty.

In this paperback edition, the author explores English fabric making from 1880 to 1920, when British textile designers became artists in their own right.

Parry, who works at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, includes well-known figures of the era such as William Morris as well as dozens of lesser-known designers as she traces England’s print-crazed period.

(Some of the best photos include Victorian-era houses where the fad reached its print-on-print pitch.)

But the book is as much about describing the industry of the time as it is about images of textiles, and 50 color plates of the mostly organic-dyed, whimsically designed fabrics may make you never want to see another swatch of toile, checks or stripes again.

Alexandria Abramian-Mott