Publications

This article discusses the technical and historical relationship between piled fabrics in the Eastern Mediterranean, the United Kingdom, and the United States, focusing on the roles of material and technology. It starts in the Ottoman Empire. Weavers in Bursa and Istanbul made towels with looped pile, in a structure that may related to silk velvets. In the mid-nineteenth century, a British ethnographer named Henry Christy observed women in the Ottoman Empire making towels with a texture unknown to him. He gave a piece of this fabric to his brother, the director of the family hatting and plush manufactory in Lancashire, who in turn passed it on to the mills' chief engineer. In 1851, Christy’s Royal Turkish Towel won a prize at the Great Exhibition and a patent was registered to its inventor, Samuel Holt. Holt was then lured to New Jersey by a group of investors, and supervised the American Velvet Company, registering patents and continuing work with cotton terrycloth and silk velvet. This extended case study poses questions about material and technology, and craft and industrial production; it also investigates the structure of early modern terrycloth in the Ottoman Empire, based on five examples from the Textile Museum’s collection.