Woven textile pattern, 18th c.

Woven textile pattern, 18th century, D-Monschau. D-Monschau, Stiftung Scheibler-Museum Rotes Haus, Tuchmuster 2384 (MS-Inventory 43).

The back of this pattern is made of brown merino wool, the top of sea silk. It is very similar to the woven fragment from the Natural History Museum in London (MS Inventory 17).

This cloth sample 2384 is part of the Musterbuch der Feinen Gewandschaft (pattern book of a textile guild) from 1813 in Monschau, a former textile town south of Aachen, which was famous for its high-quality cloth. It was not known for a long time that the Scheibler company also experimented with sea silk. Fortunately, the pattern book is completely preserved. More about the adventurous way to discover this pattern can be found in Historical Aspects → Modern Times → Production and Trade → Germany, and more detailed in the Yearbook 2013, Das Monschauer Land (Maeder 2013).