I love a hand blocked textile, especially hand blocked linen. I love the imprecise precision, the uneven impression, the modulated color - things in themselves not important but which in total add up to a kind of lively beauty a machine could never reproduce.What I love more than the front is the back. The front is a bravura exercise in color and form, strong and impudent, but the back where the dye has been forced unevenly through the weave is reticent, abraded and watercolorish.
Compare the images of this beautiful Lee Jofa cotton chintz, Amazon: the front above and the back below. Do you see how the front remains firmly in the 19th century (though introduced in 1993) whilst the back crosses the fin-de-siecle and moves towards impressionism?
Who could not love this?
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