Impressive Textiles

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.

Suzanne Karr Schmidt has been the George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Chicago’s Newberry Library since 2017. She is also the director of the Movable Book Society, an international organization celebrating the makers and collectors of pop-up books that was founded in 1993. A scholar of the hybridity and materiality of early modern print, her monograph, Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance, was published in 2018. Karr Schmidt most recently curated the playful blockbuster exhibition Pop-Up Books Through the Ages at the Newberry Library and authored a prizewinning catalog for her exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life.