Tradition · painted chintz tradition · India
Coromandel chintz, Machilipatnam
Also known as Machilipatnam — Coromandel chintz
The Coromandel chintz (kalamkari) tradition at Machilipatnam in Krishna district, Andhra Pradesh — the hand-painted and block-printed cotton textile tradition that was the chief Indian export to Europe in the 17-18 centuries. Chintz means from Hindi 'chint' (spotted or variegated). The Machilipatnam kalamkari uses natural dyes (indigo, red madder, yellow pomegranate, black iron) applied by kalam (bamboo pen) for painted designs and wooden blocks for printed designs. The 17-18 century Dutch (Pulicat, 1610), English (Masulipatnam, 1611) and French (1668) factories at Machilipatnam shipped millions of yards of Coromandel chintz to Europe, where it became the fashionable fabric of court dress and interior furnishings. The 1727 English Calico Acts banned chintz imports to protect British wool producers — the beginning of British protectionism against Indian textiles. GI tag 2008 for Srikalahasti kalamkari (hand-painted) and 2009 for Machilipatnam kalamkari (block-printed).
- Date
- 1500–1800
- Function
- Trade & production
- Condition
- living port city
- Material
- cotton
- River basin
- Krishna delta
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 16.190, 81.140
Connections (2)
- Craft tradition ofDhaka muslin
Bengal muslin and Coromandel chintz were the two ends of the Indian textile export economy: the first prized for fineness of spinning, the second for fastness of colour. Together they were the largest manufactured export in the world before industrialisation, and both were undercut by the machinery their own success had motivated Europeans to build.
- Craft tradition ofMachilipatnam / Masulipatnam / Bandar
Machilipatnam's kalamkari was painted rather than block-printed, drawn freehand with a kalam pen in iron and alum mordants and dyed in madder and indigo, and it was made to Persian and Southeast Asian taste rather than Indian. The port and the craft are the same economy: the town's weavers and painters worked to orders brought in by the ships in its roads.
On these journeys
Sources
VOC/EIC trade records; textile histories of Coromandel cloth and kalamkari.
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