Garthwaite, Anna Maria – Silk-weaving was her forte

Anna Maria Garthwaite  (1688-1763)

Anna Maria Garthwaite was the daughter of a wealthy Rev Ephraim Garthwaite Rector of Harston, near Knipton, and his wife Rejoyce (nee Hausted).

The family lived mainly in Grantham.

Anna Maria left Grantham to live in York with her twice-widowed sister Mary from 1726 to 1728. They moved to a house in Princelet Street in the silk-weaving district of Spitalfields east of the City of London where Anna Maria created over 1000 designs for woven silks there over the next 30 years.

Some 874 of her original designs in watercolour from the 1720s through 1756 have survived and are now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Many of these designs are dated and annotated with weaving instructions and the names of the weavers to whom they were sold.

Her work is based on botanical forms and her designs change to become closer to real nature from 1742 to a point it’s often easy to recognize the flower variety. The favorites are auriculas, honeysuckle, daisies, tulips, convolvulus tricolor, lilies and aloe leaves.

She died aged 75 and was buried at Christ Church, Spitalfields.