# “Birds and Squirrels” Furnishing Fabric

- By: Jean Baptiste Huet (France, Jouy-en-Josas)
- Date: 1806
- Medium: Cotton; roller printed
- Classification: Textile
- Dimensions: 296.5 × 236.2 cm (116 3/4 × 93 in.)
- Culture: France
- Credit line: Elizabeth M. Schultz Endowment Fund
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/256788)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/6ae69ad2-3741-7f9f-11be-d182d8153edc/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

The late 18th and early 19th centuries were an incredibly fertile period for innovation in the European textile industries, especially in the field of direct printing. Decades of experimentation led to the development of a variety of ways to apply color and pattern to cloth, which enabled artists and designers to invent new design vocabularies and quickly respond to cultural trends and ideas. One of the most enduring of these innovations was the ability to print on cloth with copperplates and then subsequently with engraved copper metal rollers. The quality of detail achieved through this method was unrivaled in terms of clarity, precision.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0