Anishanslin, assistant professor of history and art history at the University, first fell under Mrs. Willing’s gaze at Winterthur Museum while completing a project on early American style for her doctorate in history, which she received in 2009.

“You can’t miss her,” says Anishanslin, whose assignment was to sketch a piece of furniture in the room. “Her dress actually matches the furniture quite nicely.”

Fast-forward two years, and imagine Anishanslin’s surprise during a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London when she spotted the original watercolor of that flamboyant floral pattern from Mrs. Willing’s silk dress.

“I knew I had seen it before,” she says, and then remembered where. Intrigued, she returned to Winterthur and sought out all the information she could find on the painting.

The book reveals insightful details about the four individuals whose lives intertwined within a silk dress, as well as the history of early America, trade, women’s roles, slavery and the colonies’ relationship with the rest of the world.

Because few letters, diaries or other historical documents remain to tell their stories, Anishanslin focused on what does exist—the visual material—to recreate her subjects’ lives. The work took her to unexpected places.

“Textiles are so closely linked to the human body,” she says. “Imaginatively reconstructing the past through what people wore is an intimate thing.”

Anna Maria Garthwaite, the designer who created the vivid floral pattern, was from Spitalfields—the silk-weaving center in London’s East End. Her work was a subject of national pride in an ongoing battle for superiority between English and French silk designers.

Simon Julins, the London weaver who made the silk cloth, lived only two blocks from Garthwaite’s townhouse and both were longtime members of the congregation of Christ Church Spitalfields. (As part of her research, Anishanslin even asked the current owner of Garthwaite’s house if she might see inside, which the owner graciously allowed.)

New England painter Robert Feke must have been proud of his portrait of Mrs. Willing because he signed it. After all, Anishanslin found, Feke applied his signature to only a handful of works.

As Anishanslin unearthed and pieced together “bits of archival detritus,” she had to take a leap of faith now and then. “You can’t go down every rabbit hole, or you will never get out.”

She also says she couldn’t have accomplished her detective work without the assistance of generous museum curators, librarians, even an apothecarist.

“Research is a really solitary thing,” she says, “but it is a group effort as well. You need to rely on the kindness of strangers and great fellowship.”

Anishanslin says the moral of her story is that we should visit museums and really think about what we see.

“When you look at a portrait, it’s not just a portrait,” she says. “There are all of these really fascinating stories embedded in each object.”

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