Calico cotton cloth

Meanwhile in the West

Hugely popular in Europe from the 17th c. (and later imitated industrially).

Fair to say

'Calico' is a fabric type/trade good, named after Calicut.

Path to modern innovation

A foundational cotton textile in global trade.

Builds on

• 5,000 BCECotton cultivation and spinning
• 1,500 BCEIndigo dye and calico printing

Transmission

Exported to Africa, Egypt and then Europe.

1. Gujarat, 13th c. CE. Gujarati block printers

   Printers stamp cotton with carved wooden blocks and fix the colours with mordants, so the dyes survive washing.

2. Fustat (Old Cairo), 13th-15th c. CE. Red Sea traders

   Fragments of Gujarati printed cottons survive in the rubbish heaps of Fustat, carried there by Indian Ocean merchants.

3. Calicut (Kozhikode), 1498 CE. Vasco da Gama's fleet

   Portuguese ships reach this Malabar port. Europeans name the cotton cloth they buy after it: calico.

4. London, 1700 CE. The East India Company

   Indian cottons become so fashionable that Parliament restricts them in the Calico Acts of 1700 and 1721, to protect English wool and silk.

5. Manchester, c. 1780 CE. Lancashire mill owners

   Spinning machines copy Indian cloth at industrial scale. Cotton drives the Industrial Revolution, while India's own weavers lose their markets.

Museum objects

• Sarasa with Figures, Birds, and Fantastic AnimalsThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, late 17th–early 18th centuryCC0, Met Open AccessUnreviewed
• Textile Panel of ChintzThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, 18th centuryCC0, Met Open AccessUnreviewed
• Painted Textile Depicting Celestial MusiciansThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, 16th–17th centuryCC0, Met Open AccessUnreviewed

References

• 1Encyclopaedia Britannica: calico

Further reading

• 2Wikipedia: Calico

Related

Chintz (printed/painted cotton)