Colour black in eighteenth-century silk clothing fabrics’ design: Aesthetic value and durability issues of black yarns

Abstract

The article concerns the use of colour black in multi-coloured patterns of silk clothing fabrics in the eighteenth century, and the state of preservation of black-coloured fragments of the patterns. Using colour black in multi-coloured compositions would introduce three-dimensionality and depth to the patterns. Both contrasts and sharp contours were built using colour black. Unfortunately, in many known surviving examples of silk fabrics, where the fragments of patterns were woven with black yarns, deterioration is more visible than in other fragments of the patterns, woven with yarns of other colours. The deterioration process of black yarns significantly and negatively affects the aesthetic value of multi- coloured patterns. Thus, it is extremely important to protect silk fabrics against external factors that would lead to further deterioration of black yarns. The analysis of black silk yarns was conducted using the examples of fabrics from the collections of the National Museum in Kraków, the National Museum in Warsaw, and the collection of the author of the article.