Selling Silks by Lesley Ellis Miller

In 1764, British Customs confiscated a book containing hundreds of silk samples of different qualities from French agents who were attempting to sell them illegally in London. The merchants sample book acquired in 1972. A may be this very book, a fascinating record of the eighteenth-century French and English silk industries and their commercial practices. Alongside a full and faithful reproduction of the whole album, Lesley Miller sets in context the role of the book as a marketing tool from the premier European silkweaving centre of Lyon and as a model for Spitalfields manufacturers.