Peter Thornton examines the chapter on designing patterns for flowered silks in the 1756 edition of G. Smith's Laboratory, or School of Arts, and compares it with surviving Spitalfields silk designs in the Victoria and Albert Museum. He covers the author's reasons why French silk designs were preferred, the qualities required of a silk designer, and the seven classes of flowered silks (brocades, tissues, paduasoys, lustrings, damasks, velvets). He also discusses the designers James Leman, Christopher Baudouin and Anna Maria Garthwaite, and speculates that Garthwaite may have written the essay. Ten plates reproduce designs and a woven silk, and endnotes give sources.