A palampore or (Palempore) [1] is a type of hand-painted and mordant-dyed bed cover or hanging panel that was made in India for the export market during the eighteenth century and nineteenth century. [2]
A palampore or (Palempore) [1] is a type of hand-painted and mordant-dyed bed cover or hanging panel that was made in India for the export market during the eighteenth century and nineteenth century. [2]
Palampores were produced on the Coromandel Coast. [3] Palampore were recorded as being traded in Salem in the 18th Century. [4]
The term palampore may come from palangposh, a term for bedcover from Hindi "palang" (bed) and Persian "posh" (cover) [2] [5] or from Palanpur, the northwest Indian trading town. [6]
Palampores were mordant-painted and resist-dyed. [7] A palampore was made using the kalamkari technique, whereby an artist drew designs on cotton or linen fabric with a kalam pen containing mordant and then dipped the textile in dye. The dye adhered to the cloth only where the mordant had been applied. This lengthy process had to be repeated for each color in the design. Small details were then painted by hand on the cloth after the dying process was completed. [8]
Analysis indicates that some palampores were produced using chay root dye to create colours in the red and brown range. [9] [10]
Some palampores had embroidery of chain stitch worked in silk thread. [11]
Palampore patterns were usually very complex and elaborate, depicting a wide variety of plants, flowers, and animals, including peacocks, elephants, and horses. Because a palampore was hand-created, each design is unique, but many featured a central flowering tree with a mound at the base where there may be animals. [12] [13]
Design historians have noted the similarities between palampores and crewel embroidery and suggested that English trends may have influenced what East India Company directors commissioned in India. [7] [14]
Palampore made for Persia and the Mughal courts were more likely to be more formal and symmetrical in deisgn. They depicted architectural structures, shrubs and tent interiors. [15]
Palampore was popular in the Mughal and Deccan Courts. The borders of these pieces were block printed while the centre depicted intricate designs, made by hand. [16]
Palampores were exported to Europe and to Dutch colonists in Indonesia and what was then called Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka). [12] [17] [6] [5]
Palampore were labour-intensive to produce, and the light fabric they were made from is fragile, therefore, the few examples that have survived are often quite valuable today. [6] [18]
Palampores predated European production of printed-textiles and influenced innovations in chemicals and techniques used in Europe, and improvements in quality. [5] [19] [20]
In a domestic setting, American and European embroiderers cut around Indian printed cotton designs and attached them to quilts. [21]
English printers began to copy palampore designs using block printing methods with a large-scale repeat to create fabric that could be used for curtains or bedding. [21] In France, the Braquenié fabric house produced designs inspired by palampores from the 1800s. [22]
Quilting is the process of joining a minimum of three layers of fabric together either through stitching manually using a needle and thread, or mechanically with a sewing machine or specialised longarm quilting system. An array of stitches is passed through all layers of the fabric to create a three-dimensional padded surface. The three layers are typically referred to as the top fabric or quilt top, batting or insulating material, and the backing.
Textile arts are arts and crafts that use plant, animal, or synthetic fibers to construct practical or decorative objects.
A quilt is a multi-layered textile, traditionally composed of two or more layers of fabric or fiber. Commonly three layers are used with a filler material. These layers traditionally include a woven cloth top, a layer of batting or wadding, and a woven back combined using the techniques of quilting. This is the process of sewing on the face of the fabric, and not just the edges, to combine the three layers together to reinforce the material. Stitching patterns can be a decorative element. A single piece of fabric can be used for the top of a quilt, but in many cases the top is created from smaller fabric pieces joined, or patchwork. The pattern and color of these pieces creates the design. Quilts may contain valuable historical information about their creators, "visualizing particular segments of history in tangible, textured ways".
Muslin is a cotton fabric of plain weave. It is made in a wide range of weights from delicate sheers to coarse sheeting. It is commonly believed that it gets its name from the city of Mosul, Iraq, but, originally it comes from Dhaki.
Dyeing is the application of dyes or pigments on textile materials such as fibers, yarns, and fabrics with the goal of achieving color with desired color fastness. Dyeing is normally done in a special solution containing dyes and particular chemical material. Dye molecules are fixed to the fiber by absorption, diffusion, or bonding with temperature and time being key controlling factors. The bond between the dye molecule and fiber may be strong or weak, depending on the dye used. Dyeing and printing are different applications; in printing, color is applied to a localized area with desired patterns. In dyeing, it is applied to the entire textile.
Chintz is a woodblock printed, painted, stained or glazed calico textile that originated in Golconda in the 16th century. The cloth is printed with designs featuring flowers and other patterns in different colours, typically on a light, plain background.
Percale is a closely woven plain-weave fabric often used for bed covers. Percale has a thread count of about 140 or higher and is noticeably tighter than twill or sateen. It has medium weight, is firm and smooth with no gloss, and washes very well. It is made from both carded and combed yarns, and may be woven of various fibers, such as cotton, polyester, or various blends.
Bandhani is a type of tie-dye textile decorated by plucking the cloth with the fingernails into many tiny bindings that form a figurative design. Today, most Bandhani making centers are situated in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Sindh, Punjab region and in Tamil Nadu where it is known as Sungudi. It is known as chunri in Pakistan. Earliest evidence of Bandhani dates back to Indus Valley civilization where dyeing was done as early as 4000 B.C. The earliest example of the most pervasive type of Bandhani dots can be seen in the 6th century paintings depicting the life of Buddha found on the wall of Cave at Ajanta. Bandhani is also known as Bandhej Saree, Bandhni, Piliya, and Chungidi in Tamil and regional dialects. Other tying techniques include Mothra, Ekdali and Shikari depending on the manner in which the cloth is tied. The final products are known with various names including Khombi, Ghar Chola, Patori and Chandrokhani.
Frank Havrah "Kaffe" Fassett, MBE is an American-born, British-based artist who is best known for his colourful designs in the decorative arts—needlepoint, patchwork, knitting, painting and ceramics. While still a child, Fassett renamed himself after an Egyptian boy character from the book Boy of the Pyramid by Ruth Fosdick Jones. His name rhymes with 'safe asset'.
Textile printing is the process of applying color to fabric in definite patterns or designs. In properly printed fabrics the colour is bonded with the fibre, so as to resist washing and friction. Textile printing is related to dyeing but in dyeing properly the whole fabric is uniformly covered with one colour, whereas in printing one or more colours are applied to it in certain parts only, and in sharply defined patterns.
Ralli,Rilli or Rillki quilts are traditional quilts of Sindh, in southeastern Pakistan, and the surrounding regions in both Pakistan and western India, including Baluchistan, Punjab, and Rajasthan. Traditionally, they were made of cotton, but synthetic fabrics have increasingly been used since the late 1900s. The types, colors, and designs of ralli quilts vary depending upon the area in which they are made. There are different types of ralli making, three of which are widely known. These include appliqué, patchwork, and embroidered ralli. All rallis are handmade by women artisans of Sindh's remote areas. Embroidery designs and motifs indicate perceived on painted pottery from the area's ancient civilizations. Mothers used to explain several inheritance patterns to their daughters.
Turkey red is a dyeing method that was widely used to give cotton a distinctive bright red colour in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was made using the root of the rubia (madder) plant, through a long and laborious process which originated in the historical Levant region, namely being developed in India and China. Turkey red was brought to Europe in the 1740s and in France was known as rouge d'Andrinople.
Natural dyes are dyes or colorants derived from plants, invertebrates, or minerals. The majority of natural dyes are vegetable dyes from plant sources—roots, berries, bark, leaves, and wood—and other biological sources such as fungi.
Dyeing is the craft of imparting colors to textiles in loose fiber, yarn, cloth or garment form by treatment with a dye. Archaeologists have found evidence of textile dyeing with natural dyes dating back to the Neolithic period. In China, dyeing with plants, barks and insects has been traced back more than 5,000 years. Natural insect dyes such as Tyrian purple and kermes and plant-based dyes such as woad, indigo and madder were important elements of the economies of Asia and Europe until the discovery of man-made synthetic dyes in the mid-19th century. Synthetic dyes quickly superseded natural dyes for the large-scale commercial textile production enabled by the industrial revolution, but natural dyes remained in use by traditional cultures around the world.
Kalamkari is a type of hand-painted cotton textile produced in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Only natural dyes are used in Kalamkari, which involves twenty-three steps.
Muslin, a Phuti carpus cotton fabric of plain weave, was historically hand woven in the areas of Dhaka and Sonargaon in Bangladesh and exported for many centuries. The region forms the eastern part of the historic region of Bengal. The muslin trade at one time made the Ganges delta and what is now Bangladesh into one of the most prosperous parts of the world. Of all the unique elements that must come together to manufacture muslin, none is as unique as the cotton, the famous "phuti karpas", scientifically known as Gossypium arboreum var. neglecta. Dhaka muslin was immensely popular and sold across the globe for millennia. Muslin from "India" is mentioned in the book Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, authored by an anonymous Egyptian merchant around 2,000 years ago, it was appreciated by the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and the fabled fabric was the pinnacle of European fashion in the 18th and 19th century. Production ceased sometime in the late 19th century, as the Bengali muslin industry could no longer compete against cheaper British-made textiles.
Bafta is a kind of calico, initially made in India.
Piece goods were the textile materials sold in cut pieces as per the buyer's specification. The piece goods were either cut from a fabric roll or produced with a certain length, also called yard goods. Various textiles such as cotton, wool, silk, etc., were traded in terms of piece goods. The prices were determined as per the fabric quality.
Punjum was a type of Indian cotton cloth. It was produced in the Northern Circars, on the Coromandel Coastal region in South East India. Punjum was a kind of cotton longcloth that was produced in a variety of thread counts.
Nelly Homi Sethna was an Indian weaver, textile designer, researcher, writer and a crafts activist. She worked on the crossroads of Scandinavian modernism and Indian crafts tradition, which shaped her guiding philosophy. Her close association with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay played an important role in the revival and promotion of traditional Indian crafts.
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