Kilburn Buds Silk Habotai Scarf

DESIGNER'S NOTES

A wonderfully floral Fox & Chave silk habotai scarf with detailed depictions of flowers, foliage, ferns, roots, seaweeds, and algae rendered with vivid detail by the Irish born illustrator and textile designer William Kilburn (1745-1818)

Kilburn was apprenticed as a teenager to Jonathan Sisson’s linen and cotton printing factory in Lucan, near Dublin, but after his father died he moved his mother and sister with him to London around 1766 and settled in Bermondsey. There he met botanist William Curtis and was hired to prepare life-size hand-coloured illustrations for Curtis’s Flora Londinensis (1775–1798).

By 1777 he had shifted from illustration into the textile industry. He accepted a position managing a calico-printing factory at Wallington (Surrey) and shortly afterward purchased it outright. Under his leadership the works became one of London’s foremost cotton-printing firms.

Kilburn’s textile designs are characterised by elaborate Rococo floral motifs, often set against rich dark grounds. He used local British flowers alongside exotic plants, shells, cornucopia and even seaweeds and corals in flowing, intertwined compositions.

COLOURS

STYLING

A Fox & Chave habotai silk scarf can be worn with the classic knot style or a pussycat bow. You can even create a shawl effect by knotting two scarves together behind your neck and allowing them to drape over your shoulders. More scarf styling ideas are available in this wonderful How to Tie a Scarf book.