Pieces

Arthur Sanderson & Sons, London
Big City
ca. 1960
screenprinted cotton
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Heather Browne for Warner Fabrics, London
Shimmer
1985
screenprinted cotton
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Lucienne Day for Heal & Son, Ltd. (London)
Calyx
1951
screenprinted linen furnishing fabric
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Lucienne Day for Heal & Son, Ltd. (London)
 Herb Antony
1956
screenprinted cotton furnishing fabric
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Lucienne Day for Heal & Son, Ltd. (London)
Rig
1953
screenprinted linen furnishing fabric
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Timney Fowler, Ltd. (London)
Librarian
1994
screenprinted cotton furnishing fabric
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous British Makers
Fabric Panel
ca. 1850-60
block-printed wool
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Chinese Makers
Fragment with Figures and Flowers
18th century
silk embroidery on silk
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Fernand Nathay
Fabric Panel
ca. 1914
silk-satin with woven pattern
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Herman Elsberg (Lyon)
Fabric Panel
ca. 1919
silk-satin with woven pattern
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Weavers
Fabric Panel
ca. 1725
cut and uncut silk velvet
with metal-wrapped threads
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Weavers
Fabric Panel
ca. 1750-1800
silk-satin
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Weavers
Fabric Panel
ca. 1800-1820
silk-satin patterned for chair upholstery
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Weavers
Fabric Panel
ca. 1830
silk-satin
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Weavers
Fabric Panel
ca. 1880
silk-satin damask
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Weavers
Fabric Panel - Empire Revival
ca. 1900-1910
silk-satin patterned for chair upholstery
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Weavers
Fabric Panel - Urns and Sphinxes
ca. 1850-1900
cut and uncut silk velvet
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

    Though it cannot well and altogether be denied but that death naturally is terrible and to be abhorred, it being a privation of life and a not being, and every privation being abhorred of nature, and evil in itself, the fear of it too being ingenerate universally in all creatures, yet I have often thought that even naturally, to a mind by only nature resolved and prepared, it is more terrible in conceit than in verity, and at the first glance than when well pried into, and that rather by the weakness of our fantasy than by what is in it, and that the marble colours of obsequies, weeping, and funeral pomp (with which we ourselves limn it forth) did add much more ghastliness unto it than otherwise it hath.  To aver which conclusion, when I had recollected my overcharged spirits, I began thus with myself.

    If on the great theatre of this earth, amongst the numberless number of men, to die were only proper to thee and thine, then undoubtedly thou hadst reason to repine at so severe and partial a law.  But since it is a necessity from the which never an age by-past hath been exempted and unto which these which be, and so many as are to come, are thralled (no consequent of life being more common and familiar), why shouldst thou, with unprofitable and nothing availing stubbornness, oppose to so inevitable and necessary a condition.  This is the highway of mortality, our general home: behold what millions have trod it before thee, what multitudes shall after thee, with them which at that same instant run!  In so universal a calamity, if Death be one, private complaints cannot be heard.  With so many royal palaces, it is small loss to see thy poor cabin burn.  Shall the heavens stay their ever-rolling wheels (for what is the motion of them but the motion of a swift and ever-whirling wheel, which twinneth forth and again up-windeth our life?) and hold still Time, to prolong thy miserable days, as if the highest of their working were to do homage unto thee?  Thy death is a piece of the order of this All, a part of the life of this world; for while the world is the world, some creatures must die, and others take life.

– William Drummond of Hawthornden, from A Cypress Grove (London: Hawthornden Press, 1919, reprinting the original edition of 1623)