November, 19 13 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



401 



Detail from the "Allegory of Washington and Franklin" chintz 



day they brought prices commensurate with the esteem in 

 which they were held, and one would have found them 

 more often in the mansion than in the cottage. When 

 Yasco de Gama made his famous voyage around the Cape 

 of Good Hope one of his contemporaries, Odoardo Bar- 

 bosa, a Portuguese writer, referred to chintzes as follows : 

 "Great quantities of cotton 

 cloths admirably painted 

 are held in highest estima- 

 tion"; but long before that, 

 in Marco Polo's time, the 

 chintzes of the Coromandel 

 coast, India, were widely 

 and justly celebrated, as 

 various thirteenth century 

 chronicles show. 



Cotton print making by 

 blocks is one of the indus- 

 trial arts which fifty years 

 ago was all but discontinued, 

 owing to the vast output of 

 the factories and the low 

 prices at which prints made 

 by machinery could be sold. 

 Its revival like that of many 

 other forms of craftsman- 

 ship came about during the 

 latter half of the nineteenth 

 century aided, if not in- 

 spired, by William Morris 

 and his fellow workers in 

 England. The quickened 

 artistic conscience of Europe 

 and America was not slow 

 in appreciating the beauty 

 and value of hand-printed 

 fabrics, and to-day this hon- 

 orable old craft seems to be 

 returning into its own if in- 

 deed it has not already "ar- 



Old printed chintz. Scenes from English home life 



rived." Many shops where decorative textiles are sold 

 offer chintzes and other printed cottons made after the old 

 process and often from the blocks used generations ago. 



It is not difficult to distinguish a block-printed fabric 

 from one produced by the machine process. Where the 

 fabric under investigation shows a very free and open im- 

 pression with detail very 

 broadly cut and where, in 

 addition, the use of chisels, 

 gouges and other implements 

 generally used by wood 

 carvers is suggested, it may 

 safely be assumed that the 

 print is a product of the old- 

 fashioned hand-printing 

 process. If the bolder parts 

 of the design show a "flood- 

 ing" of the color used it may 

 be regarded as proof posi- 

 tive, for as in all kinds of 

 handicraft, the very irregu- 

 larities which might to the 

 undiscerning be imperfections 

 are just the marks of crafts- 

 manship for which the truly 

 knowing so eagerly look. 

 Upon the other hand, if the 

 printed cotton shows edges 

 of design very clearly and 

 sharply defined and exceed- 

 ingly delicately cut outlines, 

 such as one would find upon 

 the work of a steel or copper 

 engraver, and where the 

 colors are applied very 

 evenly and neatly with every 

 degree of subtly graduated 

 tone effect, it may be decided 

 that the print has been made 

 exclusively by machinery. 



