Bizarre silk

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.

[1][4] Woven silk designs of the 1670s had featured patterns of decorated stripes, but in the 1680s and 1690s these were replaced by the earliest "proto-bizarre" patterns, which featured exotic elements based on artifacts imported from the East Indies, China and India "indiscriminately combined with the current European taste for bulbous Baroque scrolls.

[1][5] The development of bizarre designs among the English silk weavers of Spitalfields can be dated quite closely based on surviving textiles and documents.

Around 1707 and 1708, bizarre designs combined distorted florals with architectural elements such as arches, canopies, pergolas, and diagonal fences.

[1][4] The strong reds, yellows and oranges in textile design drawings of this period are codes for various types of metallic threads.

Bizarre silk of circa 1715 features a geometric, diagonal design overlaid with stylized flowers and leaves. Silk satin with supplementary weft patterning bound in twill ( lampas ). Detail of a sleeved waistcoat, Los Angeles County Museum of Art , M.2007.211.40.