Suzanne Karr Schmidt – författare

From reproductions of Dürer copperplates to twenty-first-century apparel, this exhibition explores the history of images printed on fabric. Printing images and texts on luxurious fabrics instead of paper once took portraits, devotional images, and other artworks to the next level, brokering powerful relationships and memorializing important events on resplendent broadsides and serviceable handkerchiefs alike. However, whether fancy or functional, these early imprints from Europe and the Americas and their modern-day equivalents remain understudied and unappreciated for their artistry and deep connections to global economies. Premodern Printing on Fabric, held at the Newberry Library in 2026, is the first exhibition to tell the story of these exceedingly rare objects, highlighting new research that bridges the gap between art and book history, textiles, and printmaking.This exhibition catalog delves into fabric printings from the medieval to the modern. Examples range from seventeenth-century marriage poems and portraits on silk and devotional printings on linen reproducing cult objects to the nostalgically reprinted Albrecht Dürer copperplates and George Washington-themed handkerchiefs. A flurry of proto-computerized Jacquard-loom activity during nineteenth-century world's fairs offered woven silk memorabilia in collectible sizes, while simultaneously recreating high-end medieval manuscripts. Many unable to afford printed silks could then incorporate swatches into family quilts long before the popularity of graphic t-shirts.

From reproductions of Dürer copperplates to twenty-first-century apparel, this exhibition explores the history of images printed on fabric. Printing images and texts on luxurious fabrics instead of paper once took portraits, devotional images, and other artworks to the next level, brokering powerful relationships and memorializing important events on resplendent broadsides and serviceable handkerchiefs alike. However, whether fancy or functional, these early imprints from Europe and the Americas and their modern-day equivalents remain understudied and unappreciated for their artistry and deep connections to global economies. Premodern Printing on Fabric, held at the Newberry Library in 2026, is the first exhibition to tell the story of these exceedingly rare objects, highlighting new research that bridges the gap between art and book history, textiles, and printmaking.This exhibition catalog delves into fabric printings from the medieval to the modern. Examples range from seventeenth-century marriage poems and portraits on silk and devotional printings on linen reproducing cult objects to the nostalgically reprinted Albrecht Dürer copperplates and George Washington-themed handkerchiefs. A flurry of proto-computerized Jacquard-loom activity during nineteenth-century world's fairs offered woven silk memorabilia in collectible sizes, while simultaneously recreating high-end medieval manuscripts. Many unable to afford printed silks could then incorporate swatches into family quilts long before the popularity of graphic t-shirts.

Printed artworks were often ephemeral, but in the early modern period, exchanges between print and other media were common, setting off chain reactions of images and objects that endured. Paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, musical or scientific instruments, and armor exerted their own influence on prints, while prints provided artists with paper veneers, templates, and sources of adaptable images. This interdisciplinary collection unites scholars from different fields of art history who elucidate the agency of prints on more traditionally valued media, and vice-versa. Contributors explore how, after translations across traditional geographic, temporal, and material boundaries, original 'meanings' may be lost, reconfigured, or subverted in surprising ways, whether a Netherlandish motif graces a cabinet in Italy or the print itself, colored or copied, is integrated into the calligraphic scheme of a Persian royal album. These intertwined relationships yield unexpected yet surprisingly prevalent modes of perception. Andrea Mantegna's 1470/1500 Battle of the Sea Gods, an engraving that emulates the properties of sculpted relief, was in fact reborn as relief sculpture, and fabrics based on print designs were reapplied to prints, returning color and tactility to the very objects from which the derived. Together, the essays in this volume witness a methodological shift in the study of print, from examining the printed image as an index of an absent invention in another medium - a painting, sculpture, or drawing - to considering its role as a generative, active agent driving modes of invention and perception far beyond the locus of its production.

Printed artworks were often ephemeral, but in the early modern period, exchanges between print and other media were common, setting off chain reactions of images and objects that endured. Paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, musical or scientific instruments, and armor exerted their own influence on prints, while prints provided artists with paper veneers, templates, and sources of adaptable images. This interdisciplinary collection unites scholars from different fields of art history who elucidate the agency of prints on more traditionally valued media, and vice-versa. Contributors explore how, after translations across traditional geographic, temporal, and material boundaries, original 'meanings' may be lost, reconfigured, or subverted in surprising ways, whether a Netherlandish motif graces a cabinet in Italy or the print itself, colored or copied, is integrated into the calligraphic scheme of a Persian royal album. These intertwined relationships yield unexpected yet surprisingly prevalent modes of perception. Andrea Mantegna's 1470/1500 Battle of the Sea Gods, an engraving that emulates the properties of sculpted relief, was in fact reborn as relief sculpture, and fabrics based on print designs were reapplied to prints, returning color and tactility to the very objects from which the derived. Together, the essays in this volume witness a methodological shift in the study of print, from examining the printed image as an index of an absent invention in another medium - a painting, sculpture, or drawing - to considering its role as a generative, active agent driving modes of invention and perception far beyond the locus of its production.