10 4 FASHIONING COTTONS: ASIAN TRADE, DOMESTIC INDUSTRY AND CONSUMER DEMAND, 1660-1780 BEVERLY LEMIRE indigenous European staples of linen, wool, silk and leather persisted as the sic constituents of attire through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. {a counterpoint to this traditionalism came with the introduction of East «dian cottons; cottons rapidly became part of the vernacular of daily dress over is same period. The trade in Oriental textiles transformed the context in which other textiles were made and sold, East Indian fabrics challenged the products European manufacture, displaying properties which appealed to common and cultivated consumers. Ultimately, these textiles became a model to which ropean manufacturers subscribed, capturing the interest and responding to «¢ sensibilitics of Europcans. The characteristics of the textile products ~ cost, mposition, colour and design ~ accounted for their rapid adoption. However, ese characteristics alone did not guarantee their success. Chaudhuri noted two ades ago that ‘cultural values’ also played a part in the craze for calicoes which tinguished the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Chaudhuri 1978: 224) is chapter will consider, in sequence, the characteristics of East India textiles, ir effect on patterns of dress and fashion and the products which followed their ple, feeding the popular passion for cottons over the eighteenth century. “NEW FANCYES’ AND THE CALICO CRAZE Cotton textiles were known, and in some regions well known, long before Asian products flooded European markets in the late seventeenth century. European- made cotton fabrics were brought to markets, initially from Italy, but although ‘the tradition of manufacture had spread from Italy to southern Germany by the fourteenth century, in that period, as later, ‘linen remained the basic fibre in ‘mixed cloth where it was combined with wool, cotton and even silk’ (Mazzaoui 2981: 138). Southern and south-central Europe were the sites of a vibrant produc- sion and trade in mixed cotton goods, like fustians. Maureen Mazzaoui contends that ‘until the late sixteenth century, the Italian and Swabian monopoly over she export trade [in cotton fabrics] proved a formidable obstacle to the growth 493494 BEVERLY LEMIRE of rival industries’ (Mazzaoui 1981: 158]. However, internal and external forces. ultimately constrained these regions and their textile trades. Wadsworth and Mann identified what they called ‘a shift’ in the economic centre of gravity to the more dynamic regions of the north-west, the thriving trading regions along the Atlantic (Wadsworth and Mann 1931: 23). European fustians continued as staples. as perennial constituents of dress and furnishings. Moreover, the skills needed t= produce these goods spread throughout Europe. However, while the production of this category of fabric represented an important element of the new textile im dustries, the most radical innovations sprang from external influences. Europ. patterns of dress and domestic textiles were refashioned through the commercial cultural and economic exchanges with Asia. Asian textiles redefined standard fab- tics and reformulated consumer demand. Thereafter, Asian patterns and Asi cotton defined the ideal, ultimately sparking the emulative talents of Euro) producers. Sixteenth-century trade between India and the Iberian peninsula introduc Iberian royalty and nobility to the distinctive floral patterns of printed and broidered Asian textiles, In the seventeenth century, at the time of intensive c tact with European trading companies, the Indian sub-continent was the lar producer of cotton textiles in the world. The scale of manufacturing was mate by the diversity of qualities, colours and patterns of the goods. In the early enteenth century, Dutch and English traders auctioned novelties like pain! quilts and these sold for a surprising profit, Individual items were soon follow: by bales of textiles whose colours and designs were modified for the west buyer at the direction of European merchants, Producers from many regions of Indian sub-continent readily adapted their products for long-distance custom: the commercial appetite of the European traders seemed limitless [Irwin and B: 1970: 1-4; Chaudhuri 1978b: 7; $. Chaudhuri 1997: 9-10]. Between 1664 and 1674 the value of the English East India Company textile imports averaged between and 7o per cent of their trade. Approximately one quarter of a million pieces cloth were shipped to England in 1664; more than one million pieces were it ported in 1684, comprising 84 per cent of the English trade with India. The Dut East India Company was also responsive to the demand for textiles. Cottons silks reached a value of 55 per cent of Dutch imports by about 1700 (Chaudh: 1978a: 96-7, 282]. Chintzes were soon the acknowledged ‘ware of Gentlewom in Holland’ and were worn too by many others throughout northwestern Eur (Irwin and Schwartz 1966: 17). East Indian textiles possessed distinctive features. First and foremost, the tons were all washable and the dyes were generally colour-fast; these two fact alone represented a huge advantage over many fabrics of European manufactu: But this was not the only advantage enioyed by Asian fabrics. These imports ca! in a diverse assortment of qualities and prices. Thus this miscellany of mat als attracted consumers with pounds or pennies to spend. A guide book, writFASHIONING COTTONS in 1696 for pedlars and shopkeepers in the textile trade, recorded information on over sixty textiles widely available at the end of the century, Over half the fabrics in this guide were of East Indian origin and the author's descriptions sug- gest the breadth of the market for these goods. For example, an ‘ordinary sort! of ‘muslin, called bettilics, was commonly used for head cloths and cravats, while the cheap dyed and flower-printed dungarees found regular sales among the ‘ordinary People’, serunge, a chintz printed with ‘very pretty Flowers’, was bought by more affluent shoppers (F. J. 1696: 2, 7, 14; Lemire 1991: 12-21). Calicoes and chintzes were among the new colonial consumer products which redefined material expectations and standards of comfort. In order to comprehend this impact, one must appreciate how widely these products were distributed and the breadth of the market they acquired. The leaders of trading companies, like Sir Josiah Child, long-time head of the English East India Company, worked assiduously to find buyers for their products where none previously existed. For example, it was not self-evident that cotton could be worn in northern climates, Child recognised that he and his associates had to work hard to ‘introduce the ‘using of Callicoe ...in all these Northern parts of the world’ (Chaudhuri 1978a! 4287). One way to promote these goods was to produce commonly used ready-made articles of East Indian fabrics. The English East India Company arranged for the ‘manufacture in India of vast quantities of goods, like shirts and shifts, which were chen offered to European buyers, The promotion of high- to low-quality garments brought new types of utilitarian products to the attention of potential customers. The careful presentation of plam, painted and printed wares, at varying prices, offered novelty and comfort, and, for the merchants, the ‘Possibility some of these ‘chings may gain that repute here as may give us cause of greater enlargement in chem hereafter’ (Irwin and Schwartz 1966: 36-7) How effective were these bids to cultivate new markets? One fragmentary no- sation confirms the breadth of sales claimed by the 1696 guide book. The ledger of 2 south London haberdasher and pawnbroker hints at the degree to which these products permeated the market, even among the labouring classes. This shop- keeper resided in one of the poorer parishes of south London and he numbered among his customers a cross-section of skilled and unskilled men and women, svorking and trading in these environs. In 1669, against the name of his customer, Mary Taner, he listed a ‘remnt of calico’, which she had pawned (PRO, C 108/34] The ‘meaner sort’ readily adopted these bright washable fabrics into their daily dress, according to correspondents of the East India Company (Irwin and Schwartz 1966: 17). The introduction of Asian fabrics into stylish wardrobes was tentative at first. in the mid-seventeenth century, painted cotton robes were initially worn by the fashionable only before retiring or on rising. However, the general movement ‘of European fashions away from stiff, restrictive garb assisted the dittusion of indian fabrics through the elite and middling ranks. Contemporaries remarked 495496 BEVERLY LEMIRE Table ro.r Shop goods of Richard Read, merchant-tailor, 1674 Item Value A parcel of Lawns & cambricks & ossenbrigs £328.08.05 A parcel ot East India commodities 619.02.10 A parcel of bag Cloth hollands & German Linen 306.16.00 A parcel of canvas & dimities & other goods 62.19.05, Suma £1,317.06.08 Source: CLRO, Court of Orphans Inventory, 122. on the extent to which Indian materials became a part of normal attire. Decorat muslin aprons joined chintz petticoats and painted gowns as articles of disp! they in turn were followed by calicu lead-dresses, hoods, sleeves and pockets women, and shirts, cuffs, night shirts, robes, neckcloths and handkerchiefs men (Cary 1696: 4-5). CONSUMER CHOICE: PRODUCT COMPETITION Retailers of East India products broached every channel of trade, domestic colonial. Distribution began with the seasonal quarterly auctions by the prine East India trading companies in Amsterdam and London. These auctions were first steps in a distribution network linking shopkeepers, great and small, armies of pedlars (Chaudhuri 1978a: 131-4). The characteristics of this trade exemplified in the 1674 probate inventory of a London merchant tailor, Ric Read, seen in Table 10.1 The value of Read's ‘East India commodities’ was almost equal to the v: of all the other textiles in his shop; moreover, the East India goods com; directly with the hollands, dimities and ossenbrigs of European make. East merchandise pervaded the retail sector. In warehouses and shops there was @ of Oriental fabrics and ready-made items: Indian taffeta, ‘bengale stuffe’, pi of ‘Dungeree’ and ‘plaine bengall’ (CLRO, Court of Orphans Inventories, 301 1885), In 1714, the London merchant-tailor, Richard Cock, held over £1,000 East India textiles in a London warehouse, as well as stock, such as cottons ‘mullmulls’, in the hands of Mr James Ellwick of Amsterdam (CLRO, Court Orphans Inventory, 3013]. In the 1670s, specialist shops like that of the ‘In Gown Maker’, Edward Gunn, offered London shoppers a profusion of plain fancy robes for men and women (GLRO, AM/Pr (1) 1673/33]. The London chant, William Taylor, died in 1692 with over £340 worth of stock in his s! including a wide range of men’s and women’s accessories made from asso: cotton fabrics. Women could choose from muslin coifs, head cloths of stri or ‘ordinary’ muslin, quilted calico caps and calico hoods; men could pickFASHIONING COTTONS neckcloths from a choice of ‘sea’, flowered or mazareen muslin. Prices ranged from a few pence for a calico cap to over a shilling for more elaborate head cloths {CLRO, Court of Orphans Inventory, 2197). Consumers could buy East Indian cottons by the yard or ell, but also in ready-made forms, a fact that enhanced the sale of these commodities. Outside the metropolis, shopkeepers of various sorts Supplied muslin and calico to their customers. Legions of pedlars linked the urban retail outlets with rural buyers. For example, in 1669, a chapman in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, numbered a dozen calico hoods among his stock priced at sd each [PRO, PROB 4, 5058). Margaret Spufford affirmed the breadth of commercial activity among English pedlars during the seventeenth century. Their network moved copious quantities of merchandise from city tradesmen to towns, villages and rural communities, Sputford notes that in the late seventeenth century ‘cottons, muslin, dimity and calico, were an important minor line’ in the chapmen’s stock-in-trade (Spufford 1984: 90). And, indeed, there is ample evidence of cheap striped and plain muslin and calico in the-inventories of pedlars and shopkeepers in the provinces. The recent work of Laurence Fontaine on European pedlars charts an equally vigor- ous pedlar network throughout the north-west of continental Europe, one which grew on a somewhat later time frame than in England. However, in terms of the functioning of the trade Fontaine asserts that: ‘The “Scotch Draper's” cam- paign was no different from that undertaken by the pedlar from the Auvergne or from the Dauphine’ (Fontaine 1996: 88). Fed from urban stores, peripatetic traders conveyed cheap and attractive items to the hands of a wide assortment of buyers, Trade was cultivated among the wealthy, as well as among folks with nly pennies to spare. Moreover, customers displayed an allegiance to these novel commodities. Price was an important factor in the success of East Indian items. This, combined with aggressive marketing, opened areas of sale where none previously existed. Thus, during the 1680s, commercial patterns arose which foreshadowed chose of the English cotton trade in the next century. For a time, in some markets, linen was overshadowed by calico. In the 1680s, in a bid to squeeze out illegal in- serlopers in their trade, the English East India Company flooded the market with textiles, reducing prices as well. Evidence of the significance of this manoeuvre survives in the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Its accounts show that, for time, aggressive marketing enabled cheap cottons to challenge European-made linens. From 1678 to 1689, the Hudson’s Bay Company made steady purchases of quantities of calico shirts, along with linen shirts. There are nine years in which fall records survive of these orders. Over this interval, the cheapest calico shirts sere more frequently lower in price than the cheapest linen shirt. Calico shirts ‘were more costly than the cheapest linen shirt during one year only. Cotton shirts cost less than linen in five out of the nine years of orders and could be Sought for the same price as linen shirts on three occasions. As a consequence, the 497498 BEVERLY LEMIRE Hudson's Bay Company bought hundreds of calico shirts for shipment to trading! stations in the north American sub-arctic (Hudson's Bay Company Archives, A’ 15/14). This pattern of substitution reflects the commercial strength of cotton even when directed at an unlikely market. The price differential and aggressive’ selling had an even greater impact when directed at local customers, where: knowledge of regional fashions and cultures could be put to good effect. FLORAL FASHIONS AND THE RESTRUCTURING OF TEXTILE DEMAND ‘The European trading companies were very sensitive to the question of cost struggled to keep prices low over the late seventeenth century. Their intermittene success accounts, in part, for the tremendous impact of these commoditie Curopean markets. But there was another equally powerful factor which excit desire for East Indian textiles; that factor was rooted in a western cultural response | to flowers. Contemporaries recognised that the most distinctive visual feature East Indian textiles was the vibrant ‘Oriental’ floral and arboreal designs app! to light textile surfaces. It was these motifs, perhaps more than the feel and wei of the fabrics, which intrigued the earliest buyers. Indeed, it was these motifs # were discussed at length by the opponents of East Indian textiles. ‘On a sudden wrote a critic of the imports, ‘we saw all our women, rich and poor, cloath’d s Callico, printed and painted: the gayer and more tawdry the better’ [N.A. 1727). a fibre, cotton accepts dye better than does linen; moreover, Indian painting dye techniques were far superior to those then current in Europe. The strength vividness of the colours were outstanding, The visual impact was tremend: As one expert noted in 1696: ‘those [fabrics] that come from the Indies ready d blue, are much the better, they never lose the colour in washing as English-d cloth doth; you may know the English-dye from the Indian by the colours, for Indian-dye is much evener dyed than the English, for the English hath brown dark spots in it’ (FJ. 1696: 27). A process of material transformation was underw. by 1700, as more and more people wore or aspired to wear garments embellis with vivid blooms, trailing vines and botanic fancies. Daniel Roche traced the composition and colour of the wardrobes of Parisi of several social ranks, across the eighteenth century. Overall, the aristoc displayed the most vibrant attire, as one might expect; among this group si and cottons were in general use early in the eighteenth century. The bourgeo! embraced the wearing of painted muslins and ‘indiennes’. The patterned In garments stood out against a general backdrop of earth tones, solid greys, bla: and browns worn by most of the population that changed only slowly. But their introduction, Indian fabrics became a less expensive alternative to the cos flowered brocades and brilliant damasks (Roche 1994: 126-33). Roche sugg: that the most dramatic change in the composition of dress could be seen la!FASHIONING COTTONS Mlustration 10.1 John Tradescant’s botanical discoveries are memorialised in this family portrait which also highlights the striking floral petticoat worn by his wife. E. de Cri portrait of Hester Tradescant and her stepson. = the eighteenth century. In this instance, the transformations in clothing and soit furnishings did not take place as soon in France as in England (Fairchilds #993: 229). In England, as in western Europe generally, one finds ample evidence © a passion for Indian painted fabrics among the affluent, for example in the £684 inventory of a Surrey merchant, Peter Proby. In his bedrooms and ‘Closett’ listed ‘Callicoe hangings’ about the Roome’, ‘a suite of painted Callicoe ‘Sartains and Valences with white inside’, plus ‘two peeces of new Callicoe’ and Soure yards of fine painted Callicoe’ for later use (PRO, PROB 5, 1892). But less 499500 BEVERLY LEMIRE BS Voarerdeinid lo meet adovong ity of GARDNERS FLORISTS; BAM bem Reese Crown betwieh 2 Wales sie Hector vie Medittey Opril 9 106 at one of Clock preity ug € there Dine wth yorr Friondass Jervints ae 3 1) ER frat | pe horn | PH 4 Ze Ti GA Pron Rip mal iy Me fils a Dn? 2B Pere Younssrmly forsSie fo Sate Sida ival WS being yoo Gronly, — Illustration 10.2 The fashion for gardens and flowers provided tremendous commercial opportunities not least of which for members of the London-based ‘Society of Gardners and Florists’ expensive fabrics were also decorated with floral prints and these found buyers among the middling and even lower social ranks. Indeed, it was the breadth of demand for these highly decorative fabrics which most concerned critics of luxury and competing manufacturers. The trade in East Indian textiles brought to Europe a type of decorative ma- terial unlike anything previously seen. There was no local equivalent. Costly brocaded silks in floral patterns were certainly available. However, they were the exclusive choice of the elites, Botanic painted and printed fabrics from Asia intro- duced a type of fluid all-over pattern that did not depend on costly raw materials and high-priced labour. The calicoes, chintzes, muslins and percales, festooned with branches, leaves, repeating blossoms, birds and insects, were radiant expres- sions of nature which charmed and intrigued. Moreover, these products arrived in Europe when the perception of the natural world was in flux. Associated with this change was a passion for flowers and yearning to control and reorder the natu- ral world. By the early seventeenth century, cut flowers graced the interiors of fashionable city homes, with an associated growth in commercial gardening and flower markets. The same vogue for flowers sparked a rise in floral paintings, which reached its apogee in the Netherlands (Schama 1993: 479). Landscapes, inFASHIONING COTTONS turn, were modelled into diverse shapes, from the formal symmetric gardens of French and Italian inspiration, to the sculpted naturalised vistas of English estates (Mukerji 1993: 452-7]. Voyages of exploration and colonisation brought flowering plants and shrubs from Asia and the Americas to eager European collectors, Specimens found their way from plant collectors’ nurseries to the stylised estates of the nobility, from the formal beds of botanic gardens to the prosaic gardens of humble enthusiasts. The floral fashion captured souls and opened wallets. Fernand Braudel described the ‘urbanised countryside’, created by an elite with a craze for rural pleasures, in remodelled sylvan settings (Braudel 1981: 281-2). Around 1700, the Earl of Chesterfield’s Derbyshire estate was a magnet for travellers like Celia Fiennes, who noted ‘that which is most admired... by all persons and excite their curios- ity to come and see is the Gardens and Waterworks’. This inveterate traveller routinely jotted in her diary the highs and lows of botanic expression in English gardens; the Dean of Winchester’s disappointed: ‘the Garden is but small old fashion’d form, but neatly kept’. It contrasted with the Fellows’ garden at New College Oxford, where ‘they take much delight in greens of all sorts {like] Myrtle Oringe and Lemons’ (Fiennes 1949: 171-2, 37, 47, 90-1]. John Evelyn listed the gardens he enjoyed, from the ‘Paradise’ of the Pitti Palace in Florence to the charm of the more modest English gardens in Norwich, in ‘which all the Inhabitans excell in this City’ (Evelyn 1985: 71, 241). Seventeenth-century Dutch migrants to England introduced commercial flower growing around Norwich, offcring ‘pleasurable curiositics’ to enthusiasts among the local gentry. At least fifteen commercial nurseries supplied the London market by the 1690s (Thirsk 1978: 46; Thomas 1963: 224). The ephemeral nature of the seasonal blooms stands in contrast to the monumental energies poured into the creation of gardens. In Chandra Mukerji’s words, these gardens were ‘testifying to the economic reach of the international capitalist trading system .... gardens were constituted as models of the exercise of power over nature’. The ‘culture of collection’, as Mukerji terms it, may well have been one of the distinguishing social markers differentiating the aristocracy (Mukerji 1993: 440, 442). But this passion for things floral did not end at their garden wallls. The normative pawterns of display were also Uansformed for men and women, as floral motifs were transcribed into printed, embroidered and quilted elements of apparel. Slippers to waistcoats, petticoats to handkerchiefs were ornamented with botanic inventions. Furthermore, a predilection for flowers was not class-specific. The culture of flowers was entwined in the religious and secular traditions of European society. For example, wreaths, nosegays and decorative flowers were common cultural idioms. Goody notes for the late Middle Ages that: ‘The new culture of flow- ers emerges in the interaction of high and low’ (Goody 1993: 164). The same claim could be made for the early modern period. Whether or not the concep- tual basis of floral culture was the same for courtiers at Versailles or apprentices -inan sorsoa BEVERLY LEMIRE in Cheapside, there was a shared attraction across the social classes. Simultane- ously, there emerged a wide and deepening market for fabrics embellished with richly naturalistic designs. The passion for flowers provided a medium and a mo tivation for the developing calico craze. Contemporaries were perhaps accurate in their claims that all the mean People, the Maid Servants, and indifferently poor Persons, ...are now cloathed in Callicoe, or printed Linen; moved to it as well for the Cheapness, a the Lightness of the Cloth, and the Gaity [sic] of the Colours.....et any one but cast their Eyes among the meaner Sort playing in the Street, or of the better Sort at Boarding School. (The Just Complaints of the Poor Weavers Truly Represented 1747, 1) Certainly in 1718 and 1719, ordinary London women made plain their preference for printed calico gowns, to the fury of local weavers. At the height of the cam- paign to ban flowered cottons, fashionable ladies and the labouring wives clung: to their chintz gowns, defying moral and physical coercion. PROHIBITION, IMITATION AND ENGLISH INDUSTRY Passionate denunciations inevitably followed the spread of novel colonial wares; the disruptive power of popular luxuries preoccupied commentators. Though cof- fee, tea, chocolate and sugar brought ancillary employment they also sparked fierce debates about the effect of popular luxury. The success of East Indian tex- tiles unleashed similarly dramatic responses, but with added elements distinct from the question of dress. For these wares charmed generations of consumers at the same time as they challenged local manufacturers and sartorial expectations. Oriental fabrics were imbued with alien and gendered characteristics. They were depicted as effeminate luxuries, corrupting in particular the female populace with their lightness and brightness, while impoverishing deserving artisans. The lan- guage of this debate was frequently couched in terms of gender antagonisms with women asserting their right to dress as they pleased and weavers claiming the right to work and constrain the choice of apparel for women, as necessary (Lemire 1991: 38-9). The loud and sometimes violent English campaign against calicoes began in the 1680s and ended finally, in r721, with a ban on almost all East In- dian fabrics. This crusade pitted the interests of the wool trade and silk weavers against those of the East India merchants and consumers. As the fashion for these fabrics swept Europe a number of governments attempted to ban these commodi- ties, forbidding their citizens legal access to these products. In a bid to protect regional industries and to preserve the sumptuary equilibrium, nations invoked legislative prohibitions. Between 1681 and 1716, France produced thirty pieces of legislation against these fabrics; Spain instituted its ban in 1713. While in Prussia, an absolute ban on calicoes, chintzes and other cotton materials was effectedFASHIONING COTTONS Sacols Sta ty-lichno the Gallicc), Printer in Tena Prints sine Catticoer Lincinge Silkes dtuffs Nene or ull at Ressonatle Les ees Mlustration 10.3 Jacob Stampe’s seventeenth-century tradecard highlights the transformation of fabric from plain to flowered. in 1721 (Berg 1997: 33-4; Bendewalk and Kasper 1951: 62-3). However, legislative victories could not compel consumer allegiance. In the Netherlands quantities of calicoes continued to be sold and used. Indeed, chintzes and calicoes formed the stuff of everyday regional dress [Irwin and Brett 1970: 30-1). At the national level, the Netherlands acted as a repository for illicit trade with neighbouring countries. One British author applauded the Netherlands for permitting the continued use of Asian textiles: Our Neighbours, the Dutch, are a wise People, and without doubt, understand all the different Branches of Trade, and their own Interest, as well as any Nation in the World; and though they have many considerable Manufactories of their own, especially of Silk, yet they have not prohibited, or so much as laid any high Duty upon any foreign Manufacture; well knowing, that excessive Duties are great En- couragement to running [smuggling], and that Prohibitions make People more eager for that which is forbid. (Weavers Pretences 1719) This trade, among other factors, convinced many that consumer preference could ‘not be legislated against. An astute critic of the English ban observed that: ‘all those who wear Callicoe or Linen now, wou’d not wear Woollen Stuffs if there was no such thing as Printed Callicoe or Linen, but Dutch or Hambro’ Strip’d 503BEVERLY LEMIRE and Chequer'd Linens, and other things of that kind’... Further Examination 1719: 20) Almost from the first appearance of East Indian textiles, artisans in Marseille Amsterdam and London worked to replicate Indian techniques and Indian designs. The process, in Schama’s words, ‘domesticated ...exoticism’ (Schama 1987: 196) The 1686 diaspora of French Huguenots spread the calico printing trades in which they specialised to Berlin, Bremen, Frankfurt, Neuchatel, Lausanne and Geneva. Migration in the eighteenth century extended the trade from Spain to Moscow. Textile printing provided an avenue whereby Europeans could capitalise on fash- ion. By the 1670s, plain cotton cloth was being printed in workshops around London and in Essex in the Indian style. By 1719, some of the London printing works employed from 100 to 200 men and boys (Chapman and Chassagne 198 5-7, 14). Moreover, there was a second area of emulation, Ambitious em trepreneurs proposed, as early as 1691, that they launch a competitive manufac” ture of calicoes. Similar proposals were repeated in the 1720s. With little fanfare. generations of local weavers struggled to replicate the Indian fabrics in blends of linen and cotton, with Indian cotton yarn and pure linen. In the textile industry. as in other trades, imitation was the catalyst for innovation (Berg 1998: 76-88) Innovation was not the preserve of any one region in Europe. From the linen districts of the Lower Rhine to the textile regions of Lowland Scotland, artisans blended imported cotton warps with various sorts of linen weft. Herbert Kisch noted the speed with which cotton warps were introduced by business-minded merchants in the Rhineland, during the late seventeenth century (Kisch 1989" 115-26).In Dutch and Flemish towns the skills in cotton production, known since! medieval times, circulated among local communities. Migration brought these arts from the Low Countries to England, Early European-made copies of Asian fabrics found buyers, encouraging experimentation, Ironically, national bans on calicoes, intended to eliminate cottons, actually protected local manufacturers working on calico substitutes. Demand was met increasingly by linen manufac turers and their mixed cotton/linen wares. And it was in the linen trade, most particularly in the English county of Lancashire, where the greatest progress was made in cotton/linen production. Thus, it is this example which will receive the greatest attention here, but Lancashire's successful industrialisation should not obscure the fact that in many other regions of Europe significant advances occurred in the cotton industry. (See the list of references for other regional and national studies.) The 1696 probate inventory of a London ‘outfitter’ contains var- ious examples of these goods, probably of English make, including one ‘flowered’ fustian and another ‘coloured’. Both were counterfeits of Indian goods (CLO, Court of Orphans Inventory, 2262]. Over the eighteenth century, regional British industries devised new techniques which enabled them to make better facsimiles of East Indian products. The variety, price and inventive printed designs, charac- teristic of East Indian textiles, were the models to which manufacturers aspired.FASHIONING COTTONS Experimentation persisted and by mid-century a range of cottons, of pure and mixed fibres, were sold to middling and labouring people. The Lancashire cot- ton/linen industry developed in incremental steps over the first half of the eight- centh century, relying initially on imported Indian thread, but more and more producing cotton weft from imported raw cotton. It continued to be illegal to make, own or use most cottons textiles, according to the Act of 1721. However, in 1734, after a final outburst against the makers of cotton/linen goods by the wool industry, the authorities ceased all official harassment of the nascent English cotton industry. In the 1740 probate inventory of Daniel Silver, a salesmen from Faversham, Kent, one finds several modest examples of these English wares: plain ‘white cotton’ at rsa yd, men’s and boy's blue and green cotton waistcoats at 2s 6d and as cach, checked shirts at 2s a piece [Kent Archives Office, PRC/11/81/238). A later probate inventory from 1750 further illustrates the merchandise provided by this growing industry. This Southampton chapman carried various sorts of cot- ton accessories: 72 pairs of stockings, 156 pairs of gloves, caps of several sorts and two cotton gowns (Hampshire Record Office, 1750 AD 012/1-2), This and many other examples testify to the successful adaptation of the British cotton/linen in- dustry. These manufacturers were in the fortunate position of having their chief competitors barred from the home market. At the same time there was a seem- ingly insatiable demand for the closest facsimile to the prohibited textiles. As a contemporary noted, ‘the Humour of the People [runs] so much upon wear- ing painted or printed Callicoes and Linnens’ (Weekly Journal 27 June 1719). In 1738, it was claimed that the majority of Manchester linen was in fact mixed with cotton. A fuller record of the state of the English cotton industry survives by chance for the 17508. Few examples of international industrial espionage are as timely as John Holker’s report on the Lancashire textile industry, prepared for the French government. His report reflects the technological challenges faced by that regional industry; it also reveals a product profile modelled on its East Indian precursors. By mid-century Lancashire offered a diversified range of stock. Some evolved from the traditional European hard-wearing fustians. The advances in fustian manufacture provided a stable foundation for the Lancashire trade, Pure cotton velvets offered a touch of luxury, particularly the flowered velvets, combined with warmth at reasonable price; thickset, diaper, jean, nankin and corduroy promised utilitarian service (Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 54, G.G. 2). However, most of the sixty-seven cotton/linen fabrics, listed in Holker’s report, aimed to meet the ongoing trend for light, washable, colourful goods. Checks, chintzes and stripes comprised the bulk of the textiles then made in Lancashire. The plain fabrics afforded a stable medium for the application of prints. The common elements of these three categories of fabrics were colour and pattern; variety was assured in the different weights, finishes and prices (Lemire 1991: 79-86). Even after two and a half centuries, the colours and prints of these samples retain an extraordinary 505506 BEVERLY LEMIRE vitality that hints at their impact when first worn, More and more of these fabries were embellished by British printers, characterised as having ‘no great Taste in Painting... but a wild kind of Imagination fit to attract the Eye’. This grudging assessment concluded that ‘the whole Kingdom is furnished with Commodities of this sort’ (Campbell 1747: 115). Holker reported that, in Lancashire, calicoes were produced in such volume that almost every week, ‘a thousand rolls [were] being sold and sent to London unbleached’ (Musée des Arts Décoratifs, G.G. 2) Was the ‘whole Kingdom’ rapt with these printed, painted cloths? So it seems But the frenzied calico craze of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth cen turies, which followed their introduction, had abated by mid-century to a steady. infatuation. There was now a more measured expectation that light fabrics adorned with new prints and motifs, would be part of one’s material environ ment. Moreover, both expectation and demand extended across a broad social spectrum. I undertook an extensive survey of English court records across the eighteenth century, using the Old Bailey Records as a foundation, cross-checking these with legal documents from numerous provinces and regions. This qualita tive study indicated who bought and owned the new cottons. I found a patter of ever-widening ownership among labouring women and working men, arti sans and maid servants, home owners and shopkeepers, gentry and aspiring gem try. Seaman, housekeeper, captain, ironmonger, coal-heaver, servant, milkman stable-keeper, ostler, merchant, gentlewoman, cider-merchant, hairdresser, spin ster, shoemaker, apothecary, baker, nurse, ship's captain and ‘servant to a mille woman’; collectively, these individuals bought, owned and used an ever-wider assortment of cottons, from the 1730s to 1780s (Lemire 1991: 205~19]. Thus, ome is not surprised to read, in 1765, of the loss by a ‘poor Woman’ of her much prized ‘small running sprigged Purple and White Cotton Gown, washed only once, tied down with red Tape at the Bosom, round plain Cuffs, and the Bottom bound round with broad Tape’ (The Public Advertiser 19 February 176s}. This is not 0 suggest that there was a homogeneity of ownership throughout the population Income, social ranks, occupation and, to a degree, geography, impinged on the capacity of men and women to purchase new consumer goods. However, interest and demand showed a surprising conformity, French historians are fortunate in having wealth of personal inventories whi enable them to trace consumer choices across the eighteenth century for vi ally all ranks. Daniel Roche offers evidence of changing preferences for fabrics colour. A brief summary of his findings suggests the important place of cott later in the century, even among the lower social ranks. In the years prior to Revolution, among all Parisian wage earners, cottons comprised about 38 perc of their wardrobes; this figure rose to 4o per cent for domestics (Roche 1994: 13 Roche's data are even more striking for the female sample, thus it is the fe! sample alone that will be considered in detail. Figure 10.1 summarises his ings. Cotton comprised 57 and s9 per cent of the clothing of Parisian women w:FASHIONING COTTONS bourgeois / rentier class domestic servants wage-earners %0 20 40 60 Figure ro. Cotton apparel owned by women, Paris, c. 1789 Proportion of clothing made of cotton Source: Roche 1994: 144-7. earners and domestic servants respectively, by the 1780s. Clothing for the wealth- ier bourgeois/rentier class of Parisian women was made up of only 23 per cent cotton, with many more silk and linen garments. Thus, cotton textiles assumed a particular importance for the women of the lower social ranks, offering the means toa brighter, more vibrant public appearance. In terms of colour, reds comprised 20 per cent and yellows, blues and greens 26 per cent of female wage earners’ apparel; for domestics, reds comprised 22 per cent and yellows, blues and greens 28 per cent of their wardrobes. This is a startling metamorphosis from the com- mon garb around 1700, predominantly wool in composition and black, grey and brown in colour. Roche confirmed that ‘{t}here was a correlation between lighter garments and brighter colours’ (Roche 1994: 126-7, 144-6). As stated above, the timing of these changes in England and the Netherlands certainly occurred ear- lier, particularly in the urban commercial regions. Nevertheless, the statistically conclusive findings from Paris are extremely valuable; they depict parallel pat- terns of change in France that were well established among other populations of wage-earning and labouring people. ‘A York pawnbroker’s ledger offers a mechanism to assess the ownership and use of cotton products, in the 1770s, for equivalent sorts of English people. It has been suggested that the north of England was less closely entwined in the consumer ‘revolution’ than the south of the country, or at the very least, less well served by retailers (Styles 1994: 139-41). However, in the case of British-made cottons, the north of England was well supplied. Dozens of pedlar firms fixed their home base in proximity to textiles towns like Stockport and Wigan, other firms of Scots pedlars carried Scottish and English fabrics to buyers throughout 507508 BEVERLY LEMIRE Furnishings Books Siver Cutlery & Tablewear Equioment & Tools Jewellery Clothing (including footwear) a 20 40 60 80 Proportions % Figure 10.2. Goods pawned with George Fettes, December 1777 Source: Acc. 38, York City Archives, the north and Midlands, The trade between one Manchester firm and customers, in Halifax, Leeds, Wakefield, York and Hull affirmed that this region received steady shipments from the hub of the cotton industry (Lemire 1991: 127, 135-7, 146-60). The York pawnbroker, George Fettes, began his trade about 1770 and the pledge book covers 1777 to 1779. Two sample periods were assessed: December 1777 and June 1778 (Acc. 38, York City Archives). During these two months all pledges were recorded, along with the name of the borrower, the goods pledged and amount bor rowed. These two periods, six months apart, permitted a comparative sampling: with seasonal fluctuations taken into account. In the late eighteenth century, as in previous periods, pawning was normally a female occupation. Figures 10.2 and 10.3 present a detailed summary of the categories of goods pledged. In this as in others pawn books, one finds a disproportionate volume of the most valu~ able of household property ~ clothing and textiles (Lemire 1998). Despite the fact that Yorkshire boasted vibrant wool and linen industries, the labouring and arti- sanal men and women of York also included cottons among their belongings. The pawned goods denote articles already in their possession; these items were not necessarily new. The pawns present a snapshot of commodities in use. However, this sample does not yield a precise picture, since most articles were not identi- fied by fabric. Therefore, this ledger quite possibly under-represents the numbers, of cotton goods brought in by customers. For example, by this date check textiles were most probably cotton, or a cotton/linen blend. The fibre composition of these items is stipulated on only two occasions when checks were listed as ‘lines: check’ ~ no doubt exceptions to the rule, Therefore, all other check goods areFASHIONING COTTONS 509 Furnishings Books Silver Cutlery & Tablewear Equipment & Toots Jewellery Clothing (including footwear) 0 10 20 30 40 50 Proportions % + Figure 10.3 Goods pawned with George Fettes, June 1778 Source: Acc. 38, York City Archives. minted as cotton, but they are counted separately. Logically, more cotton items e pawned in the December period than in July. Figure 10.4 demonstrates relative volume of cotton, linens and silks pawned in those two periods. In cember 1777, at least 12 per cent of all textiles pawned were cotton; if check res are included, the number jumps to aver 90 percent In July 1778, ta percent pawned textiles were cotton and, when checks are added, this figure rises to rly 18 per cent. Thus, among a largely labouring clientele, in a region distant m the retail dynamics of southern England, cottons comprised a minimum at least 10 per cent and a maximum of over 20 per cent of textiles pawned a major provincial centre. In the same December period, fabrics described as comprised just 9 per cent of goods pawned, while items specified as linen uunted for about 5 per cent. The July entries show 7 per cent of textiles as silk about 5 per cent as linen. There may be only a tenuous correlation between items pawned and the relative quantities of various textiles owned by this ulation. However, the pledges do reveal the significant integration of cottons a regional market. What cottons did these women and men carry from their homes to the pawn- p? The belongings spanned the gamut: coarse cotton stockings and ribbed , yards of thickset, velvet and ‘Manchester’ cotton, women’s cotton gowns great numbers ~ described as old, dirty, of dark cotton or combining silk and ‘on ~ yards of printed and flowered cotton, petticoats, nankeen and fustian ches, fustian coats, aprons of muslin ~ sprigged, striped and plain ~ handker- cfs of cotton and fine muslin, a muslin hood, and many dozens of work-a-day_ k aprons and handkerchiefs. In other words, this cross-section of materials510 BEVERLY LEMIRE Linens | sete fone} = Ban Lee , = Cottons & Checks = i= | +——}— | | | Cottons Figure 10.4 Textiles pawned, York 1777-1778 Proportion of different textiles Source: Acc. 38, York City Archives, reflected much of the output of the industrialising cotton industry. Over this period there was a steady substitution of cotton textiles for various wool, silk, linen and leathers. That substitution was most marked in the last third of the cightcenth century. Nankeen, corduroy and other sorts of fustian breeches were favoured over leather, while printed cotton gowns were preferable to those made of wool, silk or linen, Production of traditional fustians expanded in quantity and quality over this period, as manufacturers solved various technical problems of production. This evolution in dress accelerated after the 1760s, as price and production innovations brought a greater variety of textiles to the marketplace. ‘As more consumers became familiar with these products they were intrigued by their easy care and by the wide range of fabric weights, patterns and colours. By the late eighteenth century, even gentlemen adopted corduroy breeches for athletic endeavours. The new categories of velveteens and cordurvys (ured a utilitarian staple into a cloth worn by almost all classes. And, on occasion, these fustian fabrics were also flowered, combining the restyled utility fabric with the floral inspired motifs of Asian origin. Dye techniques were greatly improved by this period (Wadsworth and Mann 1931: 178-82}, while printers devised more efficient techniques to produce flow- ered and sprigged fabrics, Indeed, it is worth noting that the vogue for floral prints was unabated in the late eighteenth century. As the elder Peel explained to a Manchester gathering in 1786, ‘three parts out of four of printed goods are consumed by the lower class of people’. These included a majority of floral pat- terns, ‘of leaves variously disposed, small circles, pippins... spots, and flower heads of a daisy or buttercup form, which... .stared the beholder full in the face’FASHIONING COTTONS (Chapman and Chassagne 1981: 78). The customers at the York pawnshop owned garments embellished by Peel or his competitors. My earlier studies confirm that the consumer behaviour evident in York was replicated in south Wales, as well as central and southern England. Thus, Mrs Barber, a lighterman’s wife liv- ing in Surrey, treasured her cotton gowns ‘one a hop pattern, the other purple and white’. And Mr Andrews’ London servants sorely missed their stolen cot- ton gowns, ‘one a white Ground, with running Sprigs and Flowers, the other a dark Purple, with white Strawberries in Large Diamonds’ (The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser 16 January 1778; The Public Advertiser 24 January 1766}. The fashion for cotton extended from labourers and maid servants, maltsters and joiners, mariners and clerks, through publican and genteel widow, to a clergy- ‘man’s daughter and other gentle folk. Barbara Johnson, a genteel resident of rural Buckinghamshire, displayed a strong affinity for various light, bright fabrics and botanical prints among her purchases (Rothstein 1987). From the 1760s onwards, her selections included steadily more cottons, such as, in 1780 an English chintz swith flowers in two colours, or, in 1792, a dark ground chintz with a leaf pattern in pink and ochre (Lemire 1991: 110-13}. Even in the forest hinterland of the new American republic, English chintz formed part of the web of trade. In describ- ing the late eighteenth-century world of Martha Ballard, a midwife in Hallowell Maine, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, notes that: ‘Lumber went down the Kennebec [River], English chintz came up’ (Thatcher Ulrich 1990: 99). Similarly, in con- tinental and Scandinavian markets, the genteel and the common favoured the newly made cottons. The taste for light patterned curtains and upholstery, for brighter outerwear and washable innerwear, broke the monopoly of traditional European materials. CONCLUSION In the late twentieth century ranning shoes, joggers, light-weight hiking boots and river sandals revolutionised what we wear on our feet, as well as the way footwear is made. Leather shoes and boots, fabric slippers and mules, worn for most of the early twentieth century, would be quite recognisable to our ancestors of centuries ago. The common footwear now striding down pavements and across parks would astonish forebears of seventy years’ or two hundred years’ distance. I mention this to jog our historic imagination to a greater material sensitivity. An equally momentous shift in the physical property of dress occurred during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the diffusion of cotton textiles from rare exotics to daily apparel. The substance of dress was permanently altered; so too was the content and comfort of households. More dramatic still was the visual change. Painted and printed Indian fabrics recast the material idiom of daily life. To the ubiquitous monotony of drab coloured coats, jackets and gowns were added a constant stream of vivid printed garments. Textiles embellished sur512 BEVERLY LEMIRE with stylised floral motifs became a permanent feature of homes and of personal adornment; they became a permanent decorative component of material culture that may be seen in our homes and in our fashions to this day, East Indian textiles were an archetype of popular consumer merchandise. The products they brought to the market permanently changed the dynamics of textile production and sale, Joan Thirsk identified the importance of this new commer cial structure, stating that: ‘When we survey the magnificent range of choice available to the customer in seventeenth-century England, we are compelled to. think deeply about the economic significance of quality and variety in consumer goods and the influence which different classes exerted upon producers’ (Thirsk. 1978: 107). Calicoes and chintzes redefined the textile markets of Europe. Among the labouring classes, the middling sort and the elite, East Indian textiles inspired new waves of fashionable demand. This demand was captured in the next in- stance through the innovations of European manufacturers, most dramatically, by the British. That cotton industry thrived by addressing the technical chal- lenges of production, by cultivating new generations of vibrant floral-inspired. prints and by assuring a diverse price structure in their products. The East India trade changed both the industrial and the cultural environment of Europe, al- tering forever western decor and western dress, while setting the model to be: followed by later industries. Material culture was transformed in the process.