Chintz ( English chintz , from chīnt - mottled, spotted [1] ) - Indian fabric made of linen or cotton , decorated with a pattern, most often with floral and floral motifs on a light background. Since the XIX century, in English-speaking countries, the term has been used to denote the corresponding decorative style [1] .
Also, chintz is called printed glossy cotton fabric , the surface of which gives the impression of a grated wax . It has a special coating that gives a characteristic shine and resists pollution, does not get dirty and does not get wet with water.
History
Hand-painted ornate textile was produced in India long before the Europeans arrived. The fabric was produced both for local needs and for export to Golconda , Southeast Asia and other Asian regions, up to Thailand . The first Chintz samples came to Europe at the very beginning of the 17th century and quickly conquered the market. The fabric became especially popular in England and Holland; it was widely used in clothes and interior decoration throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, right up to the beginning of the 19th century.
The main production site for Chintz was the southeastern coast of India, the so-called Coromandel Coast . Chintz was also produced in cities in central India such as and Burhanpur , but the best specimens come from the north of Coromandel. In addition to the quality of work, this is due to the fact that the plant , from which the best quality red dye was extracted, was widely cultivated on the coast, primarily on the fertile lands of the Krishna delta.
The contours of the pattern were applied to the fabric manually using a bamboo stick with a blunt end (the so-called Kalam ), dyeing was done using the and , when the fabric was sequentially lowered into the vats with blue and red dyes. Yellow and indigo (less common) were applied with a brush directly to the fabric. Later, samples began to appear, combining a contour drawing caused by kalam and subsequent so-called] kalamkari .
The main stages of creating a polychrome pattern:
- The pattern, applied to the fabric by hand or through a stencil, is circled with the help of feces with an iron mordant, giving a black color;
- alum reacts with pigment extracted from the root of the root, giving the desired areas a red color;
- repeated application of alum and plant pigment make it possible to obtain red color in various shades;
- a piece of fabric is covered with beeswax with the exception of areas that should be colored blue, after which the fabric is immersed in a vat with indigo;
- to obtain yellow color, the desired pigment is applied directly to the appropriate areas; green color is obtained by applying a yellow pigment on top of areas previously painted in blue.
To achieve a specific shine, the fabric was polished with shells or beaten with wooden hammers (this effect disappears with time and practically did not remain on the samples that have survived to our time).
Chintz imported from India In the second half of the 18th century, the more affordable replacement for the expensive chintz was the printed , mostly monochrome , toile de jouy produced at the manufactory in near Versailles . By the beginning of the 19th century, the widespread use of printed fabrics put an end to the manual and painstaking production of chintz.
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911), " Chintz ", Encyclopædia Britannica , vol. 6 (11th ed.), Cambridge University Press , p. 235
Literature
- Katherine Brett. Origins of Chintz. - London, 1970.
- Rosemary Crill. Chintz. Indian textiles for the West. - London: V&A Publishing, 2008 .-- 144 p.