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Author(s): Giorgio Riello Article Title: Asian knowledge and the development of calico printing in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Year of publication: 2010 Link to published version: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1017/S1740022809990313 Publisher statement: Riello, G. (2010). Asian knowledge and the development of calico printing in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Journal of Global History , Vol. 5, pp.1-28
Journal of Global History (2010) 5, pp. 1–28 ª London School of Economics and Political Science 2010 doi:10.1017/S1740022809990313
Asian knowledge and the development of calico printing in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries*
Giorgio Riello Department of History, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract From the seventeenth century, the brilliance and permanence of colour and the exotic nature of imported Asian textiles attracted European consumers. The limited knowledge of colouring agents and the general absence of textile printing and dyeing in Europe were, however, major impediments to the development of a cotton textile-printing and -dyeing industry in Europe. This article aims to chart the rise of a European calico-printing industry in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by analysing the knowledge transfer of textile-printing techniques from Asia to Europe.
The Englishman John Ovington, during his travels to Surat in 1689, noted how ‘In some things the artists of India out-do all the ingenuity of Europe, viz., the painting of chintes or callicoes, which in Europe cannot be paralleled, either in their brightness and life of col- our or in their continuance upon the cloth.’1 Like Ovington, many other Europeans were impressed by the bright colours of Indian cottons and admired the precision of their design.2 Another mid-seventeenth-century traveller, the Frenchman Boullaye-Le-Gouz, explained that ‘Hitherto it is not known how the natives apply so successfully the colours to the ‘‘foyes’’ and ‘‘toiles peintes’’ in such a way that they lose nothing in the washing’, adding