Jacket
Category
Costume
Date
c. 1750
Materials
Cotton, silk and gold thread, beetle-wing case and sequins
Measurements
1160 mm (L); 530 mm (L)
Place of origin
India
Order this imageCollection
Powis Castle and Garden, Powys
NT 1183952
Caption
By the 18th century, the craftspeople of South Asia were renowned for making high-quality embroidered and woven textiles. This jacket is made of cloth of gold woven from silver-gilt foil and patterned with silk flower sprigs. It is embellished at the cuffs with katori (sequins) and beetle-wing cases. The quality indicates the high status of the jacket’s original owner, who would have worn it over a jama. The jacket may belong to a group of Indian textiles imported by Robert, 1st Lord Clive (1725–74), in March 1768 following his departure from India the year before. A controversial figure during his own lifetime, between 1744 and 1767 Clive served first as an East India Company army officer and then as Governor of Bengal. As well as leading the company’s aggressive colonial expansion in the Indian subcontinent, he amassed a huge personal fortune. His authoritarian administration and exploitation of local populations and natural resources contributed to the conditions that gave rise to the devastating Great Bengal Famine of 1770. Emma Slocombe
Summary
Cloth of gold jacket, Indian, ca 1750. Stand-up collar, bodice straight to waist, sleeves 3/4 length straight, skirt gathered from waist falling straight to hem, with slits a the sides. front opening, lined throughout with a beige cotton muslin and faced with green silk with gilt foil wefts and silk warps in horizontal stripes. Trimmed at the sleeve and hem edge. The fabric making up the dress has warps of orange silk and wefts of gilt foil and floss silk dyed to 2 pinks, blue and ivory. Twill weft faced gilt ground, and weft brocaded silk motifs of a flower sprig over double warps. A similar jacket is shown being worn over a jama in a late 18th-century portrait at Powis Castle depicting Maratha ruler Serfoji II Bhonsle (NT 1180662).
Provenance
Purchased by the National Trust from John George Herbert, 8th Earl of Powis and the Powis Estate Trustees in June 2010.
References
Antrobus and Slocombe 2025: Helen Antrobus and Emma Slocombe, 100 Things to Wear: Fashion from the collections of the National Trust, National Trust 2025, pp. 68-69. Archer, Rowell and Skelton 1987 Mildred Archer, Christopher Rowell, and Robert Skelton, Treasures from India: The Clive Collection at Powis Castle, London, 1987