Notes: I use the word
“cottons” to refer to cotton-blend fabrics as well as pure cotton
fabrics. I apologize in advance for my monotonous use of the phrase
“printed cottons,” but “calico” referred in the period to
both printed fabrics and white goods, while “chintz” suggests to
me a complex design of many colors and some of the early fabrics used
only one or two colors.
My citing system is simple: (Source as numbered in the Bibliography, page number)
Pre-1700
Cotton Production
1673 illustration of a cotton plant - Library at The Mariners' Museum
Cheap cottons,
including printed textiles had been available to Europe since the
Roman Empire via Arab and Levantine traders (8, 33).
European cotton
production began in Spain after its introduction by the Moors. By the
9th century the Spanish were producing cotton textiles. It wasn't
until around 1150 AD that cotton weaving spread to Italy where
fustian, a cloth with a linen warp and cotton weft began to be
produced. This primarily cheap cloth was exported to Spain, France,
Northern Europe and beyond until the mid 14th century when
competition from Switzerland and southern Germany increased. In 1320
Ulm, Germany was a center of cotton production (12, 73) and by the
early 1400s southern Germany in general became dominant in producing
cotton-blend fabrics. Cheap German cottons flooded into Spain,
France, Switzerland and the Netherlands, deterring local cotton
industries. (10.2, 75)
By the late 14th and
15th centuries, some parts of France and Flanders had developed
cotton industries. Most of Europe was hampered by a lack of raw
cotton, which did not grow well there (12, 49). Southern Italy and
western Mediterranean regions grew a type of short-staple cotton
which was generally used in the more rural areas, while Syrian,
Egyptian and Cypriot cotton was in demand in larger towns. (16, 315)
Trade with India and the Levant
India, who had long
traded to central Asia, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, began
trade with newcomer Portugal after Vasco de Gama discovered a sea
route to India. The Portuguese began to import indigo among other
exotic products. Until East India Companies (EICs) were formed by the
English and the Dutch in 1600 and 1602 respectively, most of Europe
was only peripherally linked to Asian trade (12, 35). Despite this,
enough indigo was flowing through Europe to prompt Germany to ban
indigo in 1577 to protect domestic woad-growers (woad being a plant
which also produced blue dye. France followed suit in 1609. The tide
was impossible to stem; 500,000 pounds of indigo entered Amsterdam in
1631 alone (6, 31). In
the early 1600s, Spain required Central
American Indians to pay taxes in the form of indigo; first collected
in the wild and later grown on plantations to the tune of nearly half
a million pounds a year (C., para. 8).
Prior to Europe's direct trade with India, Asian products were available in the Mediterranean via overland routes through Persia and the Levant. Fragments of Indian printed cottons from between ca. 1000 to 1450 AD found in Egypt reside in the Ashmolean Museum. The range of trade in Indian cottons was vast, even seven centuries before our period of interest. Venetians had been trading with the Levant since at least the 1370s, and before them, the Genoese had traded there (18, 115). The French had been trading in the east Mediterranean since at least 1400 AD (18, 146) and an English chartered company, the Levant Company, was formed in 1581 (B, para. 1&2). In the region, Persian and Levantine fabrics were sold along with Indian cottons. In the early 1600s, Levantine fabrics were being marketed in Marseilles, London, and Flanders (12, 112).
One of the early
imports by the Portuguese were “pintados”, which means “spotteds”
in Portuguese (9, 9). These were cotton textiles printed or painted
with bright, fast colors. Lisbon merchants traded these pintados “as
far as southern England before 1550” (10.3, 212). These printed
fabrics eventually came to be known by other names: chintz (chints,
chittes) and calico (calacow).
In 1609, EIC agent
William Finch wrote home to England that they might be able to sell
“pintadoes of all sorts”, and by 1613 both fine and coarse
pintados were available in London (9, 14), though they don't appear
to have been imported by the EIC until 1631 (7, 157). These early
printed fabric imports were generally used for furnishing purposes:
as bed covers, hangings, etc. They were celebrated for their bright
colors and fastness, which enabled them to be laundered, as well as
their exotic style. It seems that at this point, printed cottons were
not generally viewed as clothing fabrics. This may have been due to
the fact that many of the cloths imported were palampores, pieces as
large as 8.5 x 11.5 feet whose pattern included a wide border around
the edge and a large central motif such as the “tree of life.”
The majority of the
fabric imported by the English EIC in the 1630s was plain, checked or
striped cotton; only one-fourth was painted or printed. (9, 11). The
Dutch imported Indian cottons as well, but the majority of their
trade in cloth was intra-Asian as a means to acquire spices and other
luxury goods (as Indian cloth was used as currency in Southeast
Asia). Since the Dutch were already dominant in this market, the
English EIC came to focus on exporting textiles back to Europe. (12,
91-2) All European buyers tended to eschew the cheapest types of
cloth which were worn by working people in India and Southeast Asia
(10.1, 33).
In 1662, the English
EIC began to send “musters” or designs to be copied in India for
a more saleable product (9, 15). By the mid-1660s cottons accounted
for approximately three quarters of the English EIC imports by value,
increasing to 83% in the mid-1680s which represented 1.5 million
pieces of fabric (13.1, 86). Though all of the EIC's were importing
large amounts of Indian cottons, much of it was reexported (11, 110)
to other European countries, to Africa, and to their American
colonies.
Throughout the 17th
century, material niceties and fashion trends spread even to the
rural areas of England where people could now afford small luxuries
like buttons, ribbons or lace (10.3, 221). In the 1670s, printed
cottons began to be used as clothing fabrics in England and Holland;
however, a quote from 1683 explains that only “the meaner sort”
were wearing them in Britain (13.1, 91). After some promotion and
strategic importation of very fine textiles, it was reported in 1687
that “ladies of the greatest quality” were wearing printed
cottons (9, 16) and in 1694 the English EIC wrote to one of their
agents in India that “you can never make or send us too many of
them.” (9, 18)
European Printing
As the demand for
printed cottons increased, many entrepreneurial Europeans began to
try to reproduce the brightly-colored fabrics. The first efforts used
familiar technology, such as copperplate printing which was already
used for books and sometimes souvenir silk handkerchiefs. The
earliest efforts seem to have used existing pigments and inks (which
were not fast) and did not utilize the methods for printing mordants
on fabric. Karel Davids says in <u>The Rise and Decline of
Dutch Technological Leadership</u> that textile printing began
“in the Dutch Republic from at least the 1610s onwards” and that
print works decorated camlets and linen using copperplates and ink
and oil paint. It wasn't until the 1670s however, that the Dutch
printers began to use mordants and dye (pp. 156-157). In many ways,
European printers were reinventing the wheel because information on
Indian printing processes was fragmentary and hands-on training was
almost required to learn the trade. France received a bit of a head
start when Armenian printers settled in Marseilles in the 1660s,
bringing with them their know-how. (8, 37)
The first known printer
in England was William Sherwin in 1676 whose patent claimed “A way
for printing broad calicoes and Scotch cloth with a double-necked
rolling press [copperplate press] which is the only true way of East
Indian printing and staining goods.” (7, 65) In Holland in 1678,
printers were already achieving up to 8 colors, and by the 1680s, the
Germans had established a printing center in Berlin and the Swiss a
center in Neuchâtel (7, 75).
Setting up a print
works was a huge undertaking that required a lot of capital and a
steady supply of cloth, dyestuffs, mordants, running water and labor.
Still, they continued to spring up and Indian printed cottons
continued to flow, much to the dismay of the established wool, silk,
and linen producers. They complained vociferously and petitioned
their governments to ban these textiles. France complied in 1686 by
banning the production, importing, and wearing of all printed fabrics
– essentially giving up their early advantage. Britain would soon
issue their own prohibitions in the early 18th century.
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