Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Bedcover
Not on view
George Ormerod produced this block-printed masterpiece in 1752. The bedcover—dedicated to an English East India Company merchant and his wife—is the earliest example of an English printed cotton attributed to a specific printer. The level of detail and the application of multiple colors belie the notion that European printed textile designs were crude before the spread of copperplate printing technology a few years later. Ormerod clearly modeled his design on imported Indian armorial palampores. The individual motifs are a combination of the classical and the exotic, including the Roman god Mercury, elephants, lions, and Chinese archers who appear in the border and the central field.
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