Textile, woven silk, gold-wrapped, silver-wrapped and silk thread brocade, Varanasi, ca. 1850 GOLD AND SILVER BROCADED SILKS Very few Indian textile-makers’ names are recorded, even when their works are collected for their supreme skill. The embroidered inscriptions on these pieces are a rare exception. The Persian script records that they are ‘the workmanship of Baks [Bakhsh] Miyan, resident of Kamalpura, for Mu’in Lal, resident of Gaighat’. These valuable gold and silver brocades (known as kamkhwab or kincob) were displayed in London at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Silk woven with gilded silver and silver-wrapped thread, embroidered with metal-wrapped silk thread Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, about 1850 V&A: 752A&B-1852 [03/10/2015-10/01/2016] This textile was one of several illustrated in Owen Jones's book, The Grammar of Ornament, (London, 1856). Woven silk with gold ground and diaper design in gold-wrapped and silver-wrapped thread and black and red silk threads, containing flower heads. Kincob, an anglicised term of uncertain origin, is a rich silk fabric with patterns woven in a weft thread of gold and silver-wrapped thread (zari). It is made by wrapping gold or silver wire around a silk core (kalabuttu zari). Kincob was usually sold by weight. Varanasi (Benares), an important centre of fine weaving from ancient times, developed as a silk weaving centre during the Mughal period. The net or trellis pattern (jali, trellis or net)used in this piece was copied in Britain by design 'reformers' such as William Morris and Owen Jones and usually referred to as a 'diaper' pattern.