For two millienia, India was the only country that had figured out how to dye or print in color in cotton, because it was extremely difficult before the modern era, involving complicated methods and obscure plant extracts. Pliny marveled over it in 70 A.D. and England didn’t learn the methods until the mid-1700s . So India was more or less the sole supplier of printed cottons, or chintz – a Hindi word – not just to Europe but also to places such as Japan, southeast Asia, and the middle East, in patterns following the local traditions. An exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum entitled Global Threads: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintztells the story.
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Chintz made in India c.1875 for the Iranian market
