Room 1 Introduction
Ranging from a sumptuous 18th Century decorative hanging, to a mass produced T Shirt used for advertising purposes, the art and craft of textile printing covers a vast area. To define textile printing as "the reproduction of a design or decoration", using an implement charged with a dye paste, is obviously too simple. To decorate a fabric involves today as in earlier times, the skills of a large number of dedicated craftspeople. The processes used are often laborious, and in earlier times, dangerous. Artists, designers, engravers, chemists and printers have worked together throughout the centuries and the fruit of their labor, as well as being useful and decorative result, holds an important place in the sociological hierarchy of it's time.

Room 2 The "Indiennes"
This room invites the visitor to study at close range the very first decorative textiles using the mordant technique which skillfully uses metallic salts to fix the colors onto the cloth. Printed onto a lightweight calico, these decorative panels were brought into Europe at the end of the 16th Century. Discovered by a population used to wearing heavy woolen, linen and highly embroidered silks, the freshness, and brightness of the designs, coupled with the lightweight cloth quickly seduced the European market, in terms of both decorative and apparel textiles.

Room 3 18th Century History and Technique