Between 1690 and 1720, European weavers and consumers embraced a fanciful fashion—“bizarre” silk, characterized by unconventional, abstract designs that combined Asian influenced patterns with the European courtly taste for sumptuous silks. Formed by a complex combination of techniques, the silks’ structures incorporate both a damask weave with a twill-face supplementary-weft patterning, or brocade, in silk and metallic threads that underscore their elite status as luxury goods. Coined in the twentieth century to describe the silks, the term “bizarre” has been used euphemistically by scholars and collectors to describe the strange combination of motifs found in the silks, which often differ in scale and repeat vertically.

The first silks of this kind featured vegetation derived from Indian textiles in combination with European flora; by the 1690s, their patterns were increasingly asymmetrical and elongated. The motifs seen in this example may derive from the boteh, a droplet shape with a curved end, common to India and nearby regions. But the most whimsical of these designs had no particular antecedent. The influx of Asian artifacts from global trade—as well as from European colonialism and imperialism— broadly inspired Europeans to abandon symmetry in favor of increasingly ornate and florid compositions. These silks were used for fashionable furnishings or dress and later donated to the Catholic church for ecclesiastical garments and articles, such as altar frontals. jkd & llc