Portrait of a Woman in Silk: London Designer Anna Maria Garthwaite

In this talk, Zara Anishanslin (University of Delaware) explores the life, labors, and designs of one of London's most fascinating eighteenth-century women, a woman who against all odds achieved success in the male-dominated field of silk production. Enigmatic Anna Maria Garthwaite (1688-1763) was one of early modern Britain’s few women silk designers. She also was one of its most prolific. A clergyman’s daughter with family connections to the Royal Society of London and Chelsea Physic Garden, she had intimate ties to global natural history networks that found aesthetic expression in her technically sophisticated design work. Her popular designs helped foster a craze for wearing botanically-themed fashion around the British Empire.

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