Misplaced Pages

William Kilburn
Portrait painted c.1805 by Samuel Drummond
Born	1745 (1745) Dublin, Ireland
Died	1818(1818-00-00) (aged 72–73)
Known for	Illustrations, calico printing

William Kilburn (1745–1818) was an illustrator for William Curtis' Flora Londinensis, as well as a leading designer and printer of calico. A few hundred originals of his water colour designs make up the Kilburn Album, housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

William Kilburn was born in Dublin in 1745. He was the son of a Dublin architect, Samuel Kilburn (d.1770), and was an apprentice to a calico printer, but spent his spare time engraving and sketching. He moved to Bermondsey after his father's death, and found living quarters near Curtis's nursery. Within a short while his skills were being used in the Flora Londinensis, for which he provided life-sized preparatory watercolours and thirty-one signed etchings. An engraved, illustrated trade card for the gardener Thomas Greening in the British Museum, London, further attests to Kilburn's activity in this medium. He soon returned to calico printing, becoming financially successful.

Kilburn was the chief petitioner in March 1787, requesting Parliament for design copyright protection in the textile industry. At that time Kilburn was a calico printer at Wallington in Surrey. Ralph Yates, who was a London warehouseman, regularly sold Kilburn's designs to the firm of Peel & Co. in Bury in Lancashire, who would copy the design and produce a cheaper fabric that appeared in shops within a few days. Consequently, the House of Commons proposed a Bill to control the plagiarism, a step meeting furious objections from Carlisle, Aberdeen, Manchester and Lancashire, who felt that their trade would collapse. The bill was passed in May 1787 "An Act for the Encouragement of the Arts of designing and printing Linens, Cottons, Callicoes and Muslins by vesting the Properties thereof in the Designers, Printers, Proprietors for a limited Time." This "limited Time" was a period of two months from the date of first publishing.

Many of Kilburn's works are available for viewing at The Victoria and Albert Museum, in South Kensington, London. An archive of Kilburn patterns are also available from the online V&A archives.

• Illustration of dandelion from Flora Londinensis
• Printed cotton with seaweed pattern
• c.1790 dress in a Kilburn cotton print, (RISD Museum)
• Detail of textile from dress

References

1. "Alistair Kilburn, Artist - HOME PAGE".
2. "Design | Kilburn, William". V&A Collections. Retrieved 16 February 2019.
3. Martin Hopkinson, "Gardeners' Trade Cards by William Kilburn and Francois Vivares", Print Quarterly, XXXV, no.4, December 2018, pp.420-426 http://www.printquarterly.com/8-contents/66-contents-2018.html
4. Longfield, Ada K. (1 January 1953). "William Kilburn and the Earliest Copyright Acts for Cotton Printing Designs". The Burlington Magazine. 95 (604): 230–233. JSTOR 871159.

v t e Textile designers
18th century	Anna Maria Garthwaite William Kilburn
19th century	John Henry Dearle William Morris C. F. A. Voysey
Early 20th century	Bernard Adeney Ethel Mairet Silver Studio
Mid 20th century	Laura Ashley Helen Berman Lucienne Day Ada Dietz Elenhank Alexander Girard Joan Glass Viola Gråsten Maija Isola Bernat Klein Jack Lenor Larsen Dorothy Liebes Marimekko Mario Prassinos Ernest Race Ruth Reeves Astrid Sampe Franco Scalamandré May Smith Marianne Straub Thelma Johnson Streat Mary White Suzie Zuzek
Late 20th century	Angela Adams Hiroshi Awatsuji Bronwyn Bancroft Celia Birtwell Valerie Campbell-Harding Georgina von Etzdorf Lily Goddard Hans Krondahl Meera Mehta Vuokko Nurmesniemi Graziela Preiser Siona Shimshi Sue Timney Up Tied
Early 21st century	Kvadrat

This article about an illustrator is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Scientific illustrators
• Irish botanical illustrators
• British textile designers
• 1745 births
• 1818 deaths
• British botanical illustrators
• Illustrator stubs