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Literary Review
TEXTILES
Rare visual treat
ZERIN ANKLESARIA
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While the text has its drawbacks, the photographs uplift the book.
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Chintz: Indian Textiles for the West; Rosemary Crill, Photography by Ian Thomas, V&A Publishing in association with Mapin Publishing, Rs. 2000.
A book on textiles need not be a mere history of a fabric. It can signify an entire lifestyle and take in the conditions under which the artisans worked, the symbolic or narrative meaning of motifs and much else. Chintz… does not permit such explorations. The text consists only of an Introduction of 26 pages beginning with questions and answers: ‘What is chintz?’, ‘Where does chintz come from?’ and so on, reducing it to the level of a school lesson. However, after this bumpy start it improves.
Specialised
Chintz to us means any glazed florally printed fabric used for furnishing; but from the 17th to the 19th centuries it was something far more specialised, an Indian textile created for the European market, particularly Britain and the Netherlands. The finest quality came from the northern area of the Coromandel Coast where the artisans had cultivated their skills over centuries and where chay, the source of the best red dye, grew in profusion in the Krishna delta. The climate and the soil were suitable, and there was an abundance of flowing water rich in calcium from decomposing seashells. Rinsing the cloth in it helped to fix the dye.
Creating a chintz pattern could take weeks beginning with the bleaching of the cloth in a solution of water, myrabolan fruit, and buffalo milk used for its fatty content. After being dried and smoothed the design was drawn, usually with charcoal, and then different procedures of a mind-boggling variety had to be followed for each colour, with numerous washings and bleachings with dung. At one stage it was covered with beeswax and left in the sun to melt the wax, and when numerous rounds of dyeing, rinsing and bleaching were completed the cloth was starched and polished with a shell for that gloss which distinguishes chintz from other fabrics.
Effect in Britain
One can imagine the effect it had in Britain when it was first introduced. In a culture where linen or wool block printed in subdued greys and browns was the norm, and only the rich could afford silks and embroidery, this light, brightly coloured material had a dramatic impact. Comfortable and easy to clean, with dyes that did not run but became brighter with each wash, it appeared in exotic designs never seen in Europe.
Soon patterns were created to order from Britain and a hybrid style evolved, combining Western, Indian and Chinese motifs to adorn curtains, wall-hangings and bed covers.
Within half a century chintz came to be used for clothing as well, a change disapproved by many including the sour-faced Daniel Defoe who was a journalist before he became a novelist. “Chints (sic) … has become now the dress of our ladies,” he sneered, “and such is the power of a mode, we saw our persons of quality dress’d in Indian carpets…. the chints were advanced from lying on their floors to their backs”…. Men too began to wear it, usually indoors as a robe or a waistcoat. The diarist Samuel Pepys bought himself an Indian gown as he called it, and a stunning portrait of Madame de Pompadour dated 1764 is reproduced here dressed in an elaborate chintz and lace gown, frilled and flounced in the fashion of the time.
Other motifs
Motifs other than floral ones soon appeared from a mix of cultures. A folksy scene shows Don Quixote bidding farewell to Sancho Panza seated on his donkey, and in another a Chinese lady adjusts her hairdo before a mirror while the field shows Indian fauna, particularly peacocks. A skirt is edged with a Thai architectural design and dress fragments show a gopuram, a rath and a hump-backed bull. A strangely mixed one has at the centre a powerful Christian symbol of ‘the pelican in her piety’, pecking blood from her breast to feed her young ones. Above and below her there is a sphinx and a lion, and greyhounds spring from the corners.
In the 1800s strong protests from local weavers led to a ban on the import of Indian cotton, and the invention of spinning machines and copperplate printing techniques meant that by the end of the century the craze for chintz was effectively over. Rosemary Crill has done as well as she can within the restrictions of the spare format, but the selling point of the book is the superb illustrations described in detail, providing a rare visual treat.
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