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Chintz is for All Times

Chintz. This colourful, floral cotton fabric is both familiar and exotic at the same time. It originated in India, where the decorations were painted on by hand. The Dutch East

India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) brought it to the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, and since then chintz garments have become common in many people’s wardrobes. This exhibition explores the remarkable history of chintz: how it conquered the hearts of Europeans; how it became a feature of the colourful regional wear of the city of Hindeloopen; and how it was cherished and preserved and now forms part of the collection of the Museum of Friesland. To this day, chintz is alive and well. Textiel Factorij, a team of contemporary artists, film-makers and designers, travelled to India to work with the chintz artisans there, demonstrating that chintz continues to be a source of inspiration.

‘The VOC’s Golden Cotton’

The European history of chintz began in the seventeenth century, when the Dutch East India Company traders sailed the Seven Seas. They

exchanged the chintz they bought on the Indian east coast for spices in Indonesia, but occasionally took some of the fabric home. The European elite immediately fell for the new, miraculous fabric with its silk-like lustre and bright, exotic floral decorations. Apart from being beautiful, the fine, pliable cotton chintz was also very practical: soft, washable and colour-fast. After the VOC started importing Indian chintz into Europe in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the march to victory of the ‘golden cotton’ became virtually unstoppable.

What Was the VOC?

The establishment of the Dutch East India Company in 1602 marked the starting point of Dutch supremacy in overseas trade. Its fleet connected an extensive

network of trading posts, from the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, via the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, to Asia. As well as tea, spices and luxury goods such as chinaware and fabrics, the payload of the VOC ships often included soldiers and slaves. For nearly two hundred years the VOC was the world’s largest trading enterprise, and defended its position fiercely. The company had its own army and in its heyday employed some 25,000 people. However, towards the end of the eighteenth century it lost its pre-eminence to the English and was dissolved in 1799.

An Exotic Status Symbol

East and West meet in this eighteenth-century kimono: the fabric and garment are Indian, the style is Japanese and it was worn by a wealthy Dutchman. At the time, the

Dutch Republic was the only European country to have a trading post in Japan. The emperor gave the VOC traders precious silk kimonos as business presents. At home, the VOC gentlemen wore Japonese rocken (Japanese dress coats) with pride. The Dutch elite eagerly followed their example. Sensing a commercial opportunity, the VOC quickly had large quantities of these Japanese-style kimonos made in India. A valuable and elegant garment, it was worn as a status symbol or as a luxurious housecoat.

The Secret Behind Chintz

Chintz is a colourful type of cotton from India, decorated with hand-painted or hand-printed patterns of flowers, insects and animals. The final product is pliable,

multicoloured, colour-fast and washable, which in the seventeenth century made it truly unique. For a long time it remained a mystery how Indian artisans produced this magnificent material. With great precision they cleverly exploited the chemical reactions between metal salts and vegetable dyes. Thanks to the complexity of the processes involved, they managed to keep the tricks of their trade a secret until well into the eighteenth century. The word ‘chintz’ is derived from the Persian chitta, meaning ‘spotted’ or ‘printed’. Chit is the Indian word for a wooden printing block, or stencil.

The Alchemy of Chintz

Chintz painters make use of the chemical reaction between metal salts and vegetable dyes. The patterns are painted onto the cotton base by combining the dyes

with various mordants, or fixatives, which fix the colours in the material. For each consecutive dyeing bath, different parts of the fabric are sealed with wax, to prevent the colour of that particular dyeing session from adhering in those areas. Once the colours have penetrated into the fibres, the cloth is starched, which gives it a shiny, dirt-resistant surface. The floral patterns on the early types of chintz were painted by hand with a kalam, a pen-like instrument made from bamboo. Alternatively, hand-carved printing blocks, or stencils, were used.

A Wealth of Flowers

Chintz partly owes its charm to its exuberant floral patterns. These are often decorative rather than realistic, with several types of flower sprouting from the

same elegantly winding branch. Original Indian chintz frequently combines fantasy flowers and actual local flora such as the lotus flower or the pomegranate. The decorations on chintz for the European markets were deliberately made to look more natural and ‘Westernised’, featuring peonies, carnations and cornflowers. Human figures or abstract motifs are seldom found on chintz. This may be due to the Islamic background of the Persian painters who were working in India in the sixteenth century.

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West v. East

In the late seventeenth century, the demand for chintz was so strong that textile manufacturers in Europe decided to set up their own cotton printing factories for the production of

cheap imitation chintz. This proved to be a great challenge. The colours of the decorations remained dull, because the Europeans had not yet unravelled the secrets of chintz-making. Also, the cotton fabric in Europe was coarser than that used for chintz in India. It took until 1750 for the quality of European chintz to improve sufficiently for the factories to flourish.

Cherished Chintz

Although an expensive and light-sensitive fabric, the fine quality of chintz is such that it can be reused, even after a hundred years.

This is why a relatively large amount of chintz children’s wear has been preserved, as it was usually possible to alter worn chintz garments to make smaller items such as caps or this girl’s jacket, which was created from more than 70 pieces of old chintz. In the nineteenth century chintzes were given a second life as linings for blankets, bed capes and cloaks. The Frisians made their chintz last a long time. They were also wealthy enough not to wear their clothes out completely. As nineteenth-century historians regarded the Hindeloopers as ‘the archetypical Frisians’, their chintz-rich traditional costumes, as well as other chintz items, were preserved carefully. Therefore, the collection of these historical fabrics at the Museum of Friesland is unique.

Showing it Off

Those who have money to spend will want to show it off – literally in this case. In the eighteenth century a number of Frisian noble families had palampores (bed

cover) made in India, with their coats of arms painted on them. It is likely these were rarely used, but were probably stored in chests and only taken out and displayed on special occasions.

A Flourishing Trade

Initially, it was only the upper middle class that could afford the expensive chintz. However, this situation changed rapidly. By around 1770 the fabric was available in all varieties

and sizes, from the original Indian textile to printed European chintz. The chintz business boomed. In the eighteenth century textiles constituted almost 75 per cent of India’s exports. The Indians not only made chintz in original patterns, but also versions specially adapted for the Western markets. European textile manufacturers had begun to produce their own imitation chintz, too, which they decorated with ‘exotic’ patterns. Thanks to these European imitations, chintz was affordable to the lower social classes. From a seventeenth-century status symbol for the rich, it became an eighteenth-century fashion for all. This explains how the floral cloth made its entry into the regional costume of, for example, the city of Hindeloopen.The factories prospered until around 1800 when, due to a change in fashion, the European market for chintz collapsed.

Sunhats

In the eighteenth century women wore a cap while at home, which they covered with a hat when they went outside. Known as a sunhat in Friesland, it consisted of a flat straw hat

often lined with chintz. As the brim of the cap became larger over the years, the sunhat did too. The wearer had to steady the hat with a ribbon, so her hands were never free.

Short Bodices

The kroplap (bodice) was a forerunner of the modern bra. In the eighteenth century it was fashionable for women to wear low-cut jackets. To keep their chest

warm – and decently covered – they wore a bodice under the jacket, laced up tightly around the breasts, similar to a bra. The edge would often peep out above the plain jacket, providing a colourful accent.

India in the City of Hindeloopen or‘Indiennes Hindelopiennes’

The city of Hindeloopen thrived on sea trade. As in many other coastal locations, chintz was very popular there. It was purchased from Amsterdam VOC

traders and used in the extravagant Hindeloopen costumes. The city even had its own special chintz made in India. The typical ‘Hindeloopen’ chintzes vary from the abundantly colourful to two-tone red, blue or black – and white. Blue-white chintz was worn in times of mourning, red-white was for brides and the multicoloured chintzes were for festive occasions. The fabric was incorporated in the Hindeloopen traditional wear to such an extent that, ultimately, it became part of the town’s folklore.

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Chintz Today

Chintz continues to be a source of inspiration. Textiel Factorij conducts artistic research on the history of textiles, trade routes and politics between India and

the Netherlands. In 2017 a team of Dutch designers and artists travelled to India on behalf of Textiel Factorij. Together with Indian artisans they explored the ancient traditions of block printing and kalamkari as well as the latest modern techniques so as to breathe new life into the shared history of chintz. Both in the Netherlands and in India, traditional techniques are disappearing rapidly. Carving the printing blocks, kalamkari (hand-painting the decorations) and vegetable dyeing have become rare skills. By collaborating on textile artworks, the Dutch artists and Indian artisans exchanged knowledge and inspired each other. A number of these new works can be seen in this exhibition.

Chintz: East India Cottons in Pre-Colonial West Africa

The expansion of East India cotton imports into West Africa in the late seventeenth century coincided with the transition of European commercial enterprise in

West Africa from trade predominantly in commodities to trade overwhelmingly in captives shipped across the Atlantic for enslavement in the Americas, where demand for coerced labour expanded phenomenally from the mid-seventeenth century. The other important development during the period was government restriction on the sale of East India cottons for domestic consumption in some European countries, especially England. A protective law, effective from 29 September 1701, prohibited the wearing in England and Wales of all silk goods and ‘painted, dyed, printed, or stained calicoes’ (East India chintz) imported from China or the East Indies. Another law, effective from 25 December 1722, prohibited the consumption in England of ‘calicoes printed, painted, stained and dyed’ from plain East India calicoes (that is, chintz), although these could be produced in England for export, just as the import of printed East India calicoes (chintz) for re-export was allowed. In the eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth, English merchants shipped large quantities of these prohibited East India cottons to West Africa. The English customs records show East India cottons re-exported from England to West Africa under a long list of names, with a value of £8,754,046 in 1751–1807, and a total of 12,148,290 yards in 1827–50. From 1781, East India cottons prohibited by the 1701 and 1722 laws are listed separately in the English customs records of re-exports to all parts of the world. They were re-exported largely to West Africa. To illustrate, for the three years 1790–92, 1,070,415 pieces of prohibited East India cottons (valued at £1,160,773) were re-exported from England to all parts of the world, of which 749,987 pieces (valued at £754,697) went to West Africa, being 70 per cent (quantity) and 65 per cent (value). Comparable figures for 1797–99 are 1,743,474 pieces (£2,052,894) and 926,154 pieces (£1,063,804) respectively, being 53 per cent (quantity) and 52 per cent (value). Private records of English slave traders provide much-needed clarity. In 1791/92, a Nigerian trader in Bonny port (south-eastern Nigeria) sold 73 captives to an English slave ship. Among the goods exchanged in payment were nine East India cottons and one Manchester (English): chintz 85 pieces, blue bafts 72, white bafts 25, chelloes 33, half pollicels 25, photaes 104, niccanees 61, cushtaes 47, India romals 132, Manchester romals 53 (a total of 637 cotton pieces). Given the estimated number of captives exported across the Atlantic from West Africa, we can imagine the amount of cotton textiles imported annually into West Africa by all the European traders in the late eighteenth century.

Joseph E. Inikori, Professor of History, University of Rochester, USA

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Also on display

Victorian Chintz and its Legacy

The European enchantment with Indian chintzes led to several attempts at their imitation. William Sherwin was the first to achieve this in his London calico-printing

works, using his 1676 patented treatment of mordants. He was the first in Europe able to produce fast-dyed patterned cottons and linens. However, within twenty years British weavers, fearful of competition from chintzes imported by the English East India Company (1600–1874), began attacking ships carrying Indian cottons and the ‘chintz crisis’ was in full swing. By 1700 their importation into Britain was banned; in 1721 the use of British-made printed cottons was also forbidden. In 1734 an exception was made permitting printing on fustian – cloth interweaving linen and cotton – for the export market. Progress was slow until the repeal of these ‘Calico Acts’ in 1774. This coincided with a period of British innovation, first in mechanical cotton spinning, followed by the perfection of powered looms and rollers for printing. Between 1800 and 1820 English cotton cloth production overtook that of India. Still primarily hand-block printed, all this changed with the understanding of cold (mainly inorganic) colourants, which underpinned the improvement of rotary printing. By about 1828 machines in Lancashire could print three colours simultaneously. By 1850 British machine-made cotton yarns and cloths dominated the global market but were distributed with specialist hand-block printed goods. The latter became renowned as ‘English chintzes’. Their use in Victorian aristocratic interiors – and the American liking for their naturalistically rendered flowers – allowed those hand-blocking to survive, although in diminishing numbers, through the twentieth century. Today one printer, Edward Turnbull & Stockdale Ltd, preserves this 350-year-old English tradition along with other hand-crafted techniques at Turnbull Designs Ltd, its specialist manufacturing unit in Thailand.

Annie Phillips: Ancient Technique and Contemporary Art

The artist Annie Phillips creates bold, vivid works of art using an ancient form of wax-resist dyeing, the art of batik. Wax-resist dyeing can be traced back to ancient

Egypt, and variations of the resist technique can be found across the world. Phillips has studied with artisans in Indonesia and Ghana, and with these techniques produces unique textile pieces. Using a traditional tool called a canting (or tjanting) and brushes, Phillips spreads hot wax, heated to the consistency of honey, onto the surface of the fabric she is working. A layer of dye is applied to the fabric, with the waxed area resisting the dye. Further layers of wax and dyes are built up to create a graphic, multilayered artwork that challenges the viewer’s perception of what the batik technique can achieve. Phillips applies her batiked designs to an array of goods, from printed textiles to ceramics and glass to handwoven rugs, taking a traditional form and bringing it into contemporary designs.

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London Bridge

Coming soon: Beautiful People: The Boutique in 1960s Counterculture“We were young, rich and beautiful, and the tide – we thought – was turning in our favour. We were going to change everything, of course, but mostly we were going to change the rules.” – Marianne Faithfull.

In the mid-1960s a handful of Chelsea boutiques sparked a fashion revolution. Freed and fuelled by creative exploration and experimentation, they began selling radical clothing to the counterculture youth. Their outrageously flamboyant designs were inspired by romantic ideas of the past; Byron-esque frilled shirts were paired with Regency brocades and plush velvet trousers were mixed with influences from Morocco and the Far East. They blurred gender boundaries with increasingly androgynous styles, creating an explosion of colour, pattern and decoration.

Beautiful People explores fabulous and rare examples from these era-defining stores and designers, examining the shared free spirit of Granny Takes A Trip, Hung On You, Apple, Biba, Mr Fish, Thea Porter, Ossie Clark and more. Clothes worn by the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix will be displayed as part of recreations of these iconic boutiques.

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