Early Color Photograph for Tuesday

James Clerk Maxwell
Tartan Ribbon
(c. 1855)

I love a textile, however broad or narrow, and I love a photographed textile however canny or accidental. This guy is clearly of the canny sort, being that the ribbon is the only object imaged at the center of an otherwise empty composition (you know, deliberate). I love its "prize" shape. And I especially love the work's material proximity to dyed cloth, the watery jewel tones sunken into rag. Britain in 1855 was growing fat on colorful Indian silks and cottons, and this little print seems quite the emblem for its moment.