THE Chintz TRADE
~ THE FABRIC THEY BANNED

What made Indian chintz extraordinary, and what European textile producers could not replicate for over a century, was its colour. Indian artisans had developed sophisticated techniques of mordant dyeing and resist printing that allowed them to produce multiple fast colours on a single piece of cloth ~ colours that would not fade with washing or exposure to light. European textiles of the period, by contrast, were largely limited to wool and linen, often in dull colours that bled and faded.

Indian chintz was lightweight, breathable, vibrantly colourful, washable, and beautifully patterned. For European consumers accustomed to heavy, dark-coloured fabrics, it was a revelation.

When the European trading companies ~ the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French ~ began importing Indian printed cottons in significant quantities during the early 17th century, the response was immediate and intense. Indian chintz became the most fashionable fabric in Europe. It was used for clothing, for furnishings, for wall hangings, for bed covers. Demand seemed limitless.

The appeal was multifaceted. The colours were brighter and more varied than anything available in European textiles. The cotton was lighter and more comfortable than wool. The patterns ~ flowing florals, intricate arabesques, exotic birds and animals ~ spoke to European fantasies of the Orient. And, crucially, the colours were fast. European consumers were accustomed to fabrics that faded and bled; Indian chintz held its colour wash after wash, a quality that seemed almost miraculous.

The British East India Company, the Dutch VOC, and the French Compagnie des Indes all profited enormously from the chintz trade. Indian textiles were among the most valuable commodities traded by these companies, and the desire to control the textile trade was one of the primary drivers of European colonial expansion in India.

When we at Daughters of India describe our garments as hand block-printed, we are describing a process that is a direct descendant of the craft that produced the original chintz. The technique is essentially the same: carved wooden blocks (our blocks are carved from Shisham, or Indian rosewood), dipped in colour, pressed onto cotton cloth by hand, one impression at a time.

The dyes have evolved ~ we use eco-friendly, AZO-free dyes rather than the traditional plant-derived dyes of the chintz era ~ but the fundamental process remains unchanged. Our printers stand before their tables in workshops in Jaipur and Delhi, pressing blocks into fabric with the same rhythm and attention that their predecessors brought to the cloth that conquered Europe three centuries ago.

The chintz story is our story. Not because we claim a direct lineage to the specific artisans who produced chintz for the East India Company, but because we are part of the same unbroken tradition of Indian hand block printing ~ a tradition so extraordinary that the most powerful nations in the world once tried to ban it, and failed.