Hi!
I'm Rebecca Olds of Timesmith
Dressmaking. Welcome back to my channel!
Today I have something very special for
you as part of the CoCoVid
weekend event bringing together
costumers from all over the world
for an extravaganza of four days of
non-stop costuming treats. 
I'm delighted to be joined today
by Myrthe of Atelier Nostalgia. 
She is an academic
and historical costume with a special
love of traditional
Dutch costume and her costume activities
can be found under the name Atelier
Nostalgia on most social media so do go
check that out.
But today we're going to be talking
about Chintz!
This is a special research interest of
Myrthe's, so she's going to share
a lot of what she has found out about
its history and how it was
worn and used -- particularly in the 18th
century but its history does go back
further than that. So without further ado
I'm going to turn over to Myrthe to talk
about chintz.
Hi Myrthe, how are you?
I'm very
good! Thank you for having me
first of all. 
Thank you for accepting!
Yay
i'm very happy to sort of join in
in the CoCoVid shenanigans
and share a little of
what I found out over the years 
about this lovely fabric, right. So I
love talking about it so thank you for
having me.
so i think something that's good to
start with is like what is
chintz actually, because a lot of people
might have heard of it
and have some idea in their head of what
it is and what it looks like.
So the definition that I
want to use here really goes back to
the origins
and if you go back then chins is
a common fabric which is either hand
painted or block printed
with natural dyes using a combination of
mordant
and resist dye techniques
over the years that that definition have
has sort of changed from its origins
which really were about how it was made
into more of what it looked like which
is this beautiful floral
printed cotton which is often the
the image that we get when we look at it
today
um but of course when we think about it
when the people who were making this
fabric also in the past they were not
just making florals they were making a
lot of other things as well it's just
that
what came to europe and with that what
got the name chins at some point was
mostly floral
um but the name really goes back
like the the the definition i just used
really goes back to how it was made
um and that's such an integral part of
the story that i figured i would start
there
yes please um so
the origins of chins lie in india and
they go back for centuries
india has been producing cottons for
for a very long time and over the
centuries they developed techniques that
were superior to
almost anything else that was being made
in the world when it comes to
printed and painted cottons so
most of the chances that we see
coming to europe in the in the beginning
of um
starting really in the 16th century and
the 17 18th century
gaining popularity were hand-painted
with special types of pens and
some of them were block printed but
that's a bit rarer
and it's really this process that that
took a lot of craftsmanship and and went
through a lot of stages
um so they started with very high
quality cotton fabric um
which was bleached and then they started
with the outlines the stems for instance
in
in the darker color which is the darkish
brown almost black
which you often see the lines of of
being made of
that was a mordant and this is sort of a
technical term but mordants are
basically
um a chemical substance substance
naturally of course but it has this
chemical reaction with the fabric which
makes it more susceptible to taking dye
so what they would do is they wouldn't
necessarily dye the fabric
with the dyes that they were using but
they would
paint the fabric with the mordant and
then put it in a bath with dye and then
everything that was painted before would
actually take the color
and the reds and these dark browns were
made in this way so they would start
with these dark brown
in sort of an iron which immediately
also gave some of its color
and then for the reds they would paint
it with different
types of mordant for different shades of
red
and then they would submerge it into a
dye bath
it would come out it would then need to
be bleached because everything would be
slightly yellowish
so it would need to be washed and
bleached and then the second step after
you've done the reds
would be the blues um and blue was often
done with indigo
the thing with indigo is that it does
actually directly
present this very lovely color but that
means if you put it into a dye bath
everything turns blue
so that is is where the resist dye
comes in and that means does that resist
dye
yeah yeah okay so they would everything
that was not supposed to be blue would
be covered in a sort of wax
okay um and that's again a very
specialized process because it needs to
be very flexible because they would fold
up the fabric and
need to hold because otherwise if you've
got cracks you could have these little
lines of blue
which you do sometimes see in original
fabrics and i love seeing
these little veins because it means that
something went wrong in
in the process sort of traced back to
its roots
but then it would go into the indigo
bath it would everything that was
not covered in wax um would would turn
blue
it would be taken out again treat it
again
and then finally would be the yellows so
there are three main colors the reds the
blues and the yellows
and the yellows were also used to make
greens to
by painting over the yellows on top of
the blues
yellow was basically the only of the
three which were was applied directly
just as we would think of painting
fabric putting pink
on fabric um it was also the one that
was least resistant to light and it
would fade most
so in a lot of tins today can be
the yellow would have faded more than
the reds and the blues so
sometimes something might look loose
today while it was more green
um during the period of course green was
the most difficult to achieve because it
needs two steps so you need more
more colors it's a more involved process
but green was definitely there
a lot of the leaves are greening and
there's still some
some chances which have very vibrant
even green
grounds so the background would be
completely green
um so it was definitely done
okay it was just as main colors you see
more red and blue
and then green was for mostly in
emotions this was more
for the accents but definitely also our
perception probably is influenced a bit
by the fact that
the yellow has faded most um so some of
the green might have disappeared over
time
maybe with some kind of chemical
analysis they could trace that back but
um that would really be specialized work
so after all this dying they had some
some specific like
treatments and bleaching which really
meant that these fabrics kept
color really really well on that they
were very very vibrant
and that's also what the fabric was lot
for so much
some of these processes i believe they
still don't fully understand how it
works today
um let alone when they were doing it and
and
these just build up over the centuries
and some gents you also find some gold
and silver leaf
which i just wanted to mention because
it's so special
and we don't see it that much in
european chance because it was mostly
reserved
for the nobles in india itself
so jins was made in india but it was
a lot of it was transported to all over
the world um
but most of the chinese in europe
wouldn't have been half gold or silver
on it but there were some
some people sneaks in some pieces at
some point of course
um and they move well they catch the
light when you move and it's
such a beautiful beautiful thing
wow
so this is sort of the background of how
it's made
okay um and the reason i i wanted to use
that definition is because we have this
very clear picture of floral cotton
and that's the european perception
of gins because that was what was made
for european market but of course it
comes from india and the people there
would have
named it after the process rather than
the motifs because they made things for
all over the world
they made things for different markets
in different places
um and they have been doing so over a
long time before the european
showed up and not all of it was floral
there's also more more abstract
and then geometrical motifs that that
people were making
so i think that that the definition does
more right to
sort of the history of it rather than
just the european view of
what it is and what we imagined it to be
yes it seems it was a world
fabric and and so we need a world view
yeah exactly you you get chins in in
different regions so to go back to i
think the 10th century in egypt i found
prince
cotton prince which were made in india
and by the time
the europeans showed up like i said
portuguese
came in india first in the 16th century
they really
found a market that already existed a
trade network that already existed
um and what most uh most traders were
really looking for were spices
yeah um so they went to indonesia mostly
for for spices and that that's the case
for the dutch but
i think some examples for the english
yes the portuguese were the most
prominent
traders yes um in the 17th to
16th 17th century and
they found that actually these
indonesians didn't really care that much
for all their gold and their silver they
wanted these indian fabrics
right um because they knew about it and
have been a part of their culture as
well
um and india was making things
specifically
for that market the way
chins ended up in europe is very much
about
almost accident yeah they bought it in
india because they wanted the spices in
indonesia
couldn't lose everything just brought
home whatever they had left
and people loved it here um and
slowly um
in india the workshops also started to
work for
for what they call your co-european
taste in taste anyway
european chins in the way
what we see was really made for europe
we see it as this exotic fabric which it
was and people viewed it as such
um but it was made for europeans with
europeans in mind
um and people would bring descriptions
or pictures um paintings to india to
show
to the to these mostly the middlemen
because there were middlemen between
the traders and and the craftsman often
and they say well can you make something
like this um
and then you for instance get in in the
early 18th centuries
you see these changes which really
resembled the bizarre silks of the time
really wow with these really big
stylized floral but almost weird
type of pattern yes whereas later on if
you go on and time the tinsels it
becomes
less and more rococo yes
that was not because the indians evolved
their taste
so so what it looks like is really this
this interesting mix of indian
craftsmanship and european ideas
of exoticism mixed with their
their european taste and that's what
really
brought these patterns to life so the
narrative of india and it changes of
course later in time but
of course the trading agencies they they
were there to trade they were there for
the money but it also meant they wanted
to monopoly
and yes then it became political yes
because
to have a monopoly you need power yeah
um
so they weren't just the innocent
traders
there no but i also don't like to see
these craftsmen
as victims especially at this stage in
time
because they were very good at what they
did and they were very savvy
um and they had the trade secrets
and no one else could imitate or come
close to what they could make
this is an interesting point that it was
a very valuable commodity that
gave gave rise to eventually the kind of
greed and exploitation
but at this point in time these indian
craftsmen
were not being exploited if this was
their thing i mean the europeans used
existing political structures and they
played them out again against each other
so they weren't they weren't innocent in
that sense but i also don't
like i said i don't like to paint them
as as victims
at this stage no because they were very
specialized in skilled craftsmanship
and their product was valued
enough and of course what it leads into
is this global textile trade
yes which then the european powers say
hey
um can we do this cheaper can we do this
ourselves and that leads to the
complementation in america
and yes slave trade so it's it's
directly related
but it's slightly different absolutely
yes um
so you can sort of see the beginnings
but it's not
quite the same story yet
so yes i think if you think about the
whole story about colonialism
about cotton and about slavery then
chins feeds into that in certain
different ways it's not fully the same
story
and yet um there's very clear
relations and and things that happen
over time because other things have
happened in the past
which means that there is a relationship
there so
for the dutch the the 17th century so
the century in which
chins really started coming in in which
the east india trading company was
founded
um it was also the
the century in which the netherlands
became the republic of the netherlands
and itself became free of spain um
it's also the century in which the the
transatlantic slave trade started and in
the netherlands there were two separate
companies
the east indian trading company was
there they went to india
welcomes got spices in indonesia and
came back
um and the west indian company were the
ones who went to
to the west coast of africa traded the
slaves
to um to the locations they had in in
the americas mostly for sugar
at that point and then went back um the
east indian trading company was a lot
more successful financially but
they were involved in both um
but they were slightly separate now i
don't
think it's right to say that that makes
the east indian trade trade company more
morally superior to the west one because
they didn't trade in slaves
because trade was about monopoly and
monopoly was about power
and this is sort of how the whole
colonial story got started
right um in india itself
there were places where people were
displaced and where wars were fought
most wars were fought with the
portuguese who came there before
um but it was also a lot of
collaboration cooperation with local
power structures that were already in
place and then they would pay taxes and
trade for that they could
you know get some trade of the monopoly
um
it wasn't always peaceful but um there
were collaborations there
so the story of of chins there is that
those workers were already making for
different markets they just had an extra
market they
could um could produce for
um and i think wealthwise um
that was not a bad thing for for the
people who made
these cottons okay um
that's the story of the 17th century
right
then in the 18th century sort of
the the the heyday of the dutch trading
companies is really in the 17th century
and in the 18th century that that
gradually
declines until they go bankrupt um the
eastern israeli
company goes bankrupt near the end of
the century i think the west indian
training company goes bankrupt a couple
of times
but the story of cotton is also one that
makes it
it popularizes it in the west and that
gives rise to industrial
revolutions people who started producing
both you know the dyes and the printing
um
in the printing factories here in europe
which are sort of initially the cheap
limitations
um but also at some point because of
this rise in
need for cotton people start looking for
other sources
at that point the dutch are not that
involved anymore um
the plantations that the dutch have at
that point are mostly
in in suriname and i believe those are
mostly sugar
um i again for the morality of the story
it really doesn't matter whether it's
called no sugar there were still
still slave slave holding plantations um
but to link it to to chins the dutch
were not
that involved anymore of course you do
get um
the plantations in the americas at some
point and
the want for cotton and the fact that
this have become
such a prevalent fabric
partly largely because of chins did feed
into
how much cotton then was worth and was
worn and was wanted
and and fed into that whole industry
so the story of chins i wouldn't say is
necessarily one of
it's not one of slavery and it's some
one that's adjacent to
um colonialism but for the rush
again not quite because
they just had these small trading posts
but everything that happens there feeds
into the larger history
and leads to other things um and
that's that's a link that i think is is
good to mention and be aware of
um and the reason that the dutch was
such a rich
republic in the 17th century was because
of this trade
um and a lot of people did suffer over
that as well
right so you can't fully separate that
either but it's a different century
and the story of chin's really
in in the way we've been talking about
it really ends around 1800
and from what i know of the con story in
the us which to to be honest is
i want to learn a lot more about that i
don't know that much about it
um but that really started around that
same time
in some in some ways that printed cotton
story
that is so intrinsically linked to
the history of slavery that
it caught that that trade would not have
developed the way it did
if chins hadn't been so loved
no yeah um so it's it's really about
there's a timeline there right and
things don't just prop up they they
grow out of other things and and i think
that's where merchants ties in because
it's
the start of a lot of things i want to
highlight
how skilled these people were yes right
yeah and how how market savvy they were
yes because they were very very good at
making things for markets
from all over the world so that they
would
local tastes would would like these
these products that they made and i
think that's their
um their skill that shows through that
both as as craftman as a businessman
yeah and
and european production methods at some
point took over but it took them years
centuries to get to the level
that had had been developed in india yes
so maybe we should talk a bit about chin
thing or how it got there and what
yes sort of the timeline is so uh of
course for from my perspective i
look at things mostly through dutch
perspective um
so in that sense that's that's european
perspective for me that
i feel that that makes sense because i
am not sure i live in the netherlands
and that's sort of
the way i look at this fabric i think
everyone in the netherlands who
knows anything about jim's notes it's
indian origins
right um and yet it has strangely become
also this very dutch thing because it
at some point took over a very prominent
place in traditional costuming dutch
traditional costume
would not have looked the way it looked
now without these
global trade networks so it started like
like i mentioned before a little it
started sort of in the 16th century with
the portuguese
um who came to india mostly to
the west coast i believe
and the first chances sort of already
appeared on the scene in the late 16th
century
um we tend to really think of it as this
18th century thing but
it has such a long history um and
it's really sort of the late 17th
century that
the the big sort of the cotton craze
really starts in europe um this is sort
of
the heyday also of the dutch is india
trading company
um also of the english trading
towards india and this is when it starts
to really really catch on
yeah and initially mostly
in home decor things
of course from coming from a costuming
perspective we always think of dress
um but it was large wall cloths for
instance or best friends
that that you see in the beginnings and
you see
descriptions of room completely
decorated in chins which
there are some in dollhouses that still
exist i don't know that many
real live ones but it must have been
stunning yeah
the way that looked and the interesting
thing is that
because it was so popular a lot of
countries
were a little bit scared of their own
fabric industries
so in england and in france in
particular
they had bands at some point on pride
and cotton so you couldn't
wear trade sell or make printed cottons
and they had slightly different rules so
for instance i believe in england you
could
print uh faustian i think it's called so
this lemon cotton mix
yes because then i was like yeah the
more industrial not quite so
aesthetic yeah yeah um
but i think this is one of the reasons
also why the dutch have
a fairly prominent history with jeans of
course because they were the traders but
also because it was never banned
of course as soon as something becomes
popular an
expensive luxury product becomes popular
what do you do you try to make an
invitation that's cheaper
that's exactly what happened here people
started come printing factories
um all over though and for a very long
time they existed simultaneously but
people
people were very very good at seeing the
quality of fabric in those days
yeah that was so important um that
you know people bought it but it was
sort of the cheaper substitute
and i think even now we can we can see
the difference oh yeah you see the
difference
another reason which i think is good to
mention that they try to copy it's money
but it's also time if you send an order
to india
it takes two years to get right back
um these these journeys were very long
the process of making it was long and
the journey back was very long and
tastes
changed so to be really to be able to
react to changing fashions
yeah that was one of the other reasons
that people wanted to produce more
locally
um so it was not not just the money it
was also that aspect
um which yeah it took a long time to get
to india by bug
from europe and it was a hazard
this journey so yeah you will put in an
order and you'd have to wait two years
for it to get back jim sort of started
to become
popular at the end of 17th century the
popularity just just
kept rising really and between 1750 and
1770s also the bands in france and
england were
lifted and that's also why i think
now when we think of chins in dress and
in existing pieces
it's mostly that latter half of the 18th
century that you think about
about 1750s to 1790s
um that's really when it was at its
height
um in popularity and in how much people
owned and how much it was worn
there was also sort of the time when the
printing factories
in europe started to to start achieving
more more high quality products yeah but
again this this have been going on for
200 years at this point right
um and one thing that's good to note is
that
the european printer cotton was almost
exclusively block printed
yes there wasn't really any hand
painting being done
um so even though you also had some
block printing in india it was mostly
hand painting whereas in
europe it was much more industrial right
if you if you block print
you print everything the same in one go
so the more shades you want the more
production it entails whereas for
instance with the mornings and the reds
i do believe they could just add
different layers or or have it a little
thicker and a little thinner all right
okay
it's probably a little bit different
with the indigo i don't know for sure
but because there was a dye bath it
would
be more similar to having another round
of printing you do also get
the more two-tone or two-color things
from india
but i think it was also taste
so i know that a lot of the two-tone
fabrics which we now
see in the netherlands also sort of are
known to have been made for specific
markets
um so for instance for morning
people would in in a lot of places would
not wear red so then it would need to be
blues only
right um and then it could be made in
india just on those requests
sure so i think probably price and the
fact that production was more expensive
if you wanted more more colors and more
shades
played a part in it but i think it was
also just taste okay
um and this european taste that was also
inspired by what people knew of the east
which was then influenced by by china
um and by pottery which was blue and
white
yes true and that was so popular at the
time that that probably also influenced
to some extent
what what people's aesthetic tastes were
yes these things are all connected
aren't they yeah
it's not it's not a thing you can really
only look at
isolation as a fabric it's decorative
arts
it's the material culture that that
society was surrounded
by not just what was on their bodies but
what was on their tables and on their
walls the
aesthetic and what they wanted and what
you know down to colors and
yes and nowadays we see fabric so much
as something that you wear
but like i said the wall hangings and
the bed hangings and of course
there's this predates wallpaper so
um fabric is something you you decorate
your house with
much more than than it is now as well
yes
so those lines are a little bit blurrier
sort of the taste
changed around 1800 that's of course
something you see in the silhouette yes
and because of the dresses there's a
drastic
move from the old to the new yeah um and
and the chance popularity didn't really
survive that
so you see a lot of chance gowns in the
early 19th century
from older fabrics because people they
keep reusing it and the fabric itself
was very
sturdy and pretty and kept well yeah so
it would have been recut
and reused but for less fashionable
things yes um and then there was really
this shift also towards the white and
the sheer
fabrics and yeah and when that changed
again
jinns never really came back the way it
did because
the whole cotton industry had changed so
tremendously
in the netherlands it never really went
away um
so are our traditional or regional
costumes you should almost call it there
were
specific things that were worn in
specific regions around
towns or or or larger regions and
nowadays days we tend to think of faux
costume as this sort of national
or feeling of nationality but it's
really much more about
region and community um in those days
and in the 18th century you already have
some places that have
specific types of headdress or slightly
different ways of styling
things um and those
communities were also the slowest to
pick up on this jurassic news silhouette
so you get these pictures from
1800 in people in full hoops yeah and
you think is this miss dated but
it it's really not that it's just the
dutch protestants
you know they don't really trust change
or the french
right um so they're slow they're slow to
change
but this appreciation for good fabric
really stayed and because people were
less influenced by these fashion crazes
chins also stayed popular in a lot of
ways in in different places in small
things so people kept wearing these old
petticoats
um for a long time even though it
you know the trade to india wasn't
really there anymore um
so that did decline and change at some
point but
this this love for this fabric never
really went away
um and especially in the north in in
fisland or the town of hindelope
is the one example that everyone knows
of because they had these long coats of
chins
um and it became almost this national
symbol
yeah and that costume actually
disappeared in the 1880s
the last person wearing this daily died
in the late 19th century
but there were a lot of folk groups
which kept this
this costume alive and i think that's
also why
when dutch people see it they think of
dutch traditional costume and they think
they think of full costume
so i think that's also why there's a lot
of information available in dutch
about change true yes and incredible
collections that are in museums
that yes because people valued it as
this part of material culture and
because it had
this sort of almost nationalistic
national pride type of feeling and
especially
has its own language and its own culture
and is very proud of that
right so as a badge of of that identity
people kept it yes and therefore
it stayed popular even though
it was never as prized as a fabric as
the most luxurious silk brocade was
yeah that was also still a step beyond
that um
but tunes was treasured for for also for
that
that reason in atlanta so we have a very
large
um collection in different museums
um here in islands in different places
yes i've seen just a few and it's just
wet my appetite to see more
it's uh and i know there's a lot i
haven't seen still i've been to about
every exhibition for the last four four
or five years when they've had something
yes yeah um but i know there's more and
there's a lot of local small museums as
well
yes which is very scattered there are
permanent collections
in a much smaller scale yeah yeah yeah
so but you need to know where to look
yes
yeah so we've talked a little bit about
how it was used on decor and of course
we know from x stands
you know it's used in clothing but how
how was it worn what sorts of garments
and who is wearing it and what sort of
styles and you know let's as costumers
let's get going with what we can do
realistically and with some historical
basis um in our costuming today
yeah so i think we we know very
little about the chins that really came
early so before
you know before the the 1650s we know
very little about how it was used but
it's probably at that point it was
mostly home decor
type of things okay um so so really the
wall hangings and the bed spreads which
you do see a lot in collections today
but as of course as costumers we're not
as focused on
sheets of fabric
so would it have been decor home decor
that was driving all of that incredible
levels of trade yeah i think that's
really how it started off
how it started okay um because people
had
their way of of dressing and that didn't
suddenly drastically change with the
drastic
fabric it trickles into the homes of of
the upper class
of course because that that these were
very expensive foreign goods
they didn't just appear on the market
for everyone to buy of course
so it's home decor in these stately big
homes and and those were the people who
would have seen it
and come to know it that in most places
that's the the upper classes like the
upper echelons of society were also the
ones that
started wearing it as well okay um
but of course they were used to still
brocade and and chins never really got
to that status point
it was very pretty and um because it was
glazed at the time and it had this shine
it did right is sort of almost
likeness to silk but people were very
good at identifying fabrics then
no one would have mistaken it for a silk
so it started really in
undress yeah okay the things you wear in
your home
in the comfortable clothes um
and of course in the 18th century that
was a little bit different than we think
of it now because nowadays you wouldn't
receive your guests in your undress and
that was the thing then right
um so it started in these lounge
garments
right and that's something we still see
a lot of today because
immense clothing it almost stayed there
it it did move on a little bit but in
immense clothing you see these dressing
gowns these
um in dutch we call them yapon yes
really as a reference to the japanese
cut and style
was very much inspired by the kimonos
but then the fabric was indian
yes and it was the same in england this
rash
of fashionable people being uh having
their portraits painted
yeah in this undress style but then
their perception of what
of division between public life and
private life was different from
yeah today so that was that was what
they did so
so chince was was in that world
as well yeah that's where it was really
started
um as as undress for the rich yeah
because of course
full dress for the rich never really
became kids that much
it trickles up up into it every now and
then yeah
um but for for the very
for really yeah aristocracy chins
was never as high quality as the highest
quality silk they could get of course
of course um but then it sort of starts
to trickle down as as
things are going to do and
mainly in women's garments it really
rises
to to full popularity and you see
basically everything
but the very very richest would have
probably worn it more
as undress whereas more middle-class
people would have worn the best stuff
for for you know going to church on
sunday and the poorest couldn't afford
it
um it was it was cotton but it was still
high quality
expensive fabric yes
so you see it in quite a while in
children's clothing
the first picture that i know of is a
painting
of a family in the late
17th century and the girl so the parents
are both wearing black
um very very dutch thing to do at the
time um
because black fabrics were expensive but
the girl is actually dressed in what
look really looks like printed cotton
right so that painting is one of the
first depictions that we
we really have of chins yes and
you see also in in current collections
that there's a lot of children's
clothing
in chins a lot of babies clothing as
well um
a part of that might be that you can cut
up stuff to make it smaller
so if you have a priced fabric then it's
quite likely that at some point it will
end up
in you know a baby's outfit especially
um and probably it trickles down from
these upper classes to
to say more the servant class which in a
way
style wise was almost a bit in between
the lower classes because they would
inherit clothing from
that they served with it it became more
popular in the lower classes
as you go on when you look at what
exists now in terms of chins and museums
and the different
types of garments that have survived
looking at like what what still exists
and what do we have because it shows a
little bit about
um what type of garments jeans could be
made of
another good way is to look at inventory
lists
um so to look at what people
when people passed away there were
usually a formal list drawn up of all
their property and all their goods to
to what would go to whom and those lists
we still have
yes and the nice thing of that is that
we know they show a fairly complete
picture
terminology is always a bit difficult um
because what do they call what the story
with accents is of course
what was valuable as much as what
existed
and that you get a little bit less with
inventory lists
looking at that you see that indeed it's
mostly women's wear
so for for men it's mostly it it's
the bunions it's it's the dressing guns
sure predominantly
and then for the lower classes you do
see some
some garments um like like waistcoats
for instance made of chins in the
netherlands specifically
i know that probably existed more also
in the regions where
jeans was more worn as a type of
original type of costume
right a women's dress it it
you see almost all types of garments
made out of jeans um outer carpets
right because you know just balloons not
obviously
yeah you do see a lot more jackets
and petticoats yes than guns yes
now with that comes the know that people
in
generally dutch costume there were a lot
of regions in which people
mostly wore petticoats and jackets much
more than guns anyway
and that was really this sort of stick
to the old protestant we don't trust the
french
type of attitude which if we're wearing
fancy gowns that's not what we're going
to do
no but you don't want to be dressed
better than the person sitting next to
you in church
oh of course is this very interesting
we don't want to be fancy catholics as
the french are but we do want to be the
best rest in town
right yes so there's this very subtle um
i think in nature
i love this story this because it's so
recognizable right yes
but one of the things is the gowns were
were
i think in general a bit less worn than
in other places
um but looking at accents you also do
see
less guns but then again you have there
there's a couple of seconds which are
made of chins which
are beautiful so the one that you are
going to work on
yes i think is one of the prettiest
examples
and it's it's so it's a it's a bit of a
mystery because that one the provenance
is apparently
french it's the only one i know of in
the dutch style chains
i know of a few in in what the british
were doing to compete the british
competing yeah uh floral cottons there
there are lots of those they're a lot
smaller
yeah so the red ground that was that was
really a thing that was known to be sort
of a dutch thing
almost and you see a lot more um
chins in in dutch collections with
different colored grounds
yeah um you have the white grounds as
well but
you see a lot more of the colors there's
some blue and some green which is a bit
rarer even than
than the red but but really really
beautiful but i i personally really love
the red ground i'm
sucker for red yeah it's always
but yeah and what i also find
interesting about your your
your example is that it was it's dated
during the french bands right so
even though there were bands on wearing
this stuff people were still doing it
in announcements i know of one second
it's in the next museum that one that
does have a white ground
and it's for a sac it's it's simple
it has barely any decoration it's
doesn't have very wide hoops
um so i would say that isn't it it's
1780s
it could be yeah later very narrow
um uh pleats in the back yes yeah and
quite low in the front
especially it's very low in the front
but a lot of a lot of dutch jackets are
very very low
yes they wouldn't have been warm without
anything underneath no
absolutely um so i do wonder about
that one because it's the only one i
know of that example but you have a lot
of jackets that are cut extremely low
but that's because people would wear a
type of apartment on the park
yes and then and the english weren't
wearing the partlets they were wearing
kerchiefs and other types of things but
the partlet carried on in
the netherlands yeah so that's a very
thing but people also work achieve so
you
you don't spot these partlets in
paintings at all you don't see them
but we have a lot of accent ones and you
do get
the the fitted back gowns um
in chinces as well there's a couple of
beautiful examples in dutch collections
as well
one of one of my favorites is the one
with the red ground in the rollerdam
museum that's a very
it's the style and the cut in itself is
very reduction and the chins is very
reduction it's
yes lovely example um but jackets really
predominantly are made out of chins um
and we all know the one in the reichs
museum that is pattern matched and that
fan shape on the back is yeah just one
of the most
glorious examples that's one yeah yeah
it's
extraordinary yeah and the interesting
thing about that one is that it's
actually
envelope specific is it really from yeah
it is
you can barely see that from the back so
that no no
um but a handle as a town because they
had these long
almost like garments like without a
waste seam
yes you have a short version of that
which is open in the front
it just runs down and it has this this
sort of tape like yeah things um
so it's called a cosecant which is
probably from the french consecutive
yeah yeah um and it's cut in the same
way as the long
oh except it's just caught
short i've seen it in person and what i
really really loved is that there's
a little bit at the bottom which is
completely not symmetrical at all
but because it's cut so well in other
places
you can't even see that but it sort of
makes them it makes them human
human yeah and of course in in envelope
it was worn
in these jackets but i always say that
people love that so much but you need to
see it
in context in context i mean you can
always recreate whatever you want of
course but
if you think about how it was worn this
was worn with this
very specific type of other garments a
specific
fabric type of apron and specific
type of headdress and yes it really
belongs
together with all these other elements
yes
um to make up this this wonderful
colorful
costume that we will love today the
thing also
with that dutch culture is that you know
there's no oppression there
so um i think anything you see in that
traditional costume and and you love
feel free to be inspired by it and
especially
um it is always nice
to be the name of that style yeah so the
long code is called awenka
yes yeah yeah um
and the short one uh but
i think it's it's always good if you see
some
something which really belongs to this
very specific context
to even look at pictures because i i
know how hard it can be
to find information that is not in dutch
yes right um or your vision which
i can't read and i know in hindi they
have their own dialect again
but to be aware of that right
that would be enough to say yeah i've
seen it i know there
there's a lot more to it um and i
i i'm inspired by what it is now i want
to see yes
what i can do with that i'll take over
it i'd love to see that
yes i know that a lot of times we
get inspired by garments we see in
museums
and we take that garment that idea and
then
import it into another impression and
then there's also the temptation
sometimes when asking for advice for
people to think oh that's a very dutch
thing
well yes yes and you have some people
then saying
you can't wear that unless you're doing
a dutch impression or you've got
dutch ancestry or some sort of backstory
that adds context
and well that's not necessarily true it
is so i it's an
eye-opener to appreciate that that
jacket was part of
an overall costume and overall style of
dress that was not
just about the jacket yeah i mean
it's hintelope is known for chins but if
you look at portraits also from from
the 19th century mostly um but even
before
they were still propagates as well it's
just it's
sort of famous for this very distinctive
style that they had yeah
yeah and the thing is i'm not from
prison i don't speak the language
right um i go and visit my uncles every
once in a while because they
and they live closely in the lobby so
i've been there and i love the town but
it's
also in that sense yes i'm dutch but
what does it really mean
to have that as your as your heritage
yes yes
um also the costume groups that that
still do
that are from there and that really
still wear this dress on special
occasions
if you're genuinely interested that's
what they love right because they
they have this passion for it themselves
yes
it is about sharing the love isn't it
yeah yeah
and and sort of respecting that there's
there's a context to it and then you
don't necessarily need to completely
take over that context
so we have we have ventured into the the
question
how do you wear this how do you and this
of course raises the perennial question
about
mixing patterns what sort of um
evidence do we have or not as to
mixing different colors and motifs in
different garments wearing a loud and
proud jacket with
a petticoat that is of a completely
different design i mean
is there any foundation for that not not
that much
the thing is a lot of people they see
these beautiful fabrics and
some somehow the dry chef becomes sort
of known for mixing mixing
different prints and different things
and
i think absolutely there were different
mixing motifs and different fabrics that
nowadays we maybe wouldn't think of so
a chin's jacket would be worn with for
instance a silk brocade
um or a soaked mask skirt the mask was
very popular so the two-toned
motifs and then with a checkered
actually also indian cotton yes so
in that sense you get a lot of mixing of
colors and
patterns i've looked into how much
actually people would wear one chin's
jacket with a different chins
petticoat and it's really hard to find
solid evidence that that was done
people owned both but
when you look at most pictures it seems
to be more likely that you would wear
your chin's jacket with say
a silky mask okay very good for a rule
the mask which they also made um one of
my my other
favorite fabrics or that if they
were a chin's petticoat they were most
likely under petticoats a lot of them
right because of course if you lift your
skirts a little you see the edge and
then
um you want that to be pretty yes
so but to to wear them together
um i found one doll which has
a chance a dark round chance jacket and
a lighter skirt
but with dolls you never really know
whether they're
dressed exactly the same as they were in
the days yes
and there are there's this series of
pictures that everyone always shows us
as the printing
mixing matching yeah and they're they're
lovely images
um but they're sort of watercolor
sketched so it's really really difficult
to say whether
something is a silk brocade or whether
something is a is a print of cotton
so i'm a little bit hesitant about it i
i at some point i asked one of the
curators
um of the large chins exhibition
industry's museum a couple of years ago
she has written multiple books about
chins and in that exhibition they had a
lot of beautiful examples with
a jacket and a match and a petticoat in
different chances
um and i asked her how likely do you
think it is
um and she said well it's really hard to
know for sure
we know we have a lot of jackets we know
we have at least a fair number of
pedicles which were probably worn to be
weren't to be seen on top um
but probably it wasn't that like that
common
to always wear them together if they
didn't match
so they wouldn't be considered a
matching set yeah probably would wear
they have very very little matching sets
of jackets
so they existed to know that but also
probably people could splurge on the
jacket then and then maybe on a
petticoat next and a lot of petticoats
were
fabric was specifically printed for
petticoat because they have yes
this is true this is true it's really
hard to make a jacket out of it then
yes well like in embroidered soap panels
that were obviously embroidered to order
for particular type of garments so that
you get that which would fall
in certain places and it's interesting
yeah it's interesting
there's a couple of bunions which you
can see that the pockets are spared out
in
chins right so that was not just done
with embroidery but
cottons as well wow um so it's
it's probably not as likely as we would
sometimes like to believe just because
it's so much fun
yes um but people did own all of it at
the same time
so they would have co-existed in the
world they wouldn't have
looked at you weirdly if you showed up
in church with
a jacket and a petticoat matched um it's
just more probable that you would then
have chosen
the mask it's a little little bit
quieter um
and that then it allows your jacket to
shine or the other way around
and then of course aside from these main
garments you had a lot of more
accessory type of garments and those are
very much
often made in chins also because it's a
good way to sort of
really liven up something smaller true
yes it's true
there's a lot of sun hats um that have
beautiful linings
yes um especially the one in in his
lands
yeah they had these very big to the
front going
lace caps very much stiffened but also
with eye
wires in it so these these sun hats have
a very odd shape that makes sense
only if you see only when you've got
them all go towards the front
only um
but they often have very beautiful chins
linings which
don't sort of show through of course the
lace of the
cap um but also what we'd call powder
cloaks in dutch
um which are these little undress capes
almost
oh or for instance if you were powdering
your hair and
to protect your your clothing right and
there's
there they made those in chins yeah okay
yeah as well so so there's a couple of
those
there's actually in the museum they have
a combination of
a jacket almost empire style so that was
probably
an older fabric that was re-cut to a
newer style a sun hat
and a cape all in the same fabric
and i don't think they necessarily came
from the same collection and this was
apparently a popular fabric
yeah that was around um
and used for all these different things
and and some aprons even although it's
more probable
that that aprons were made of the
checkered cotton and then you get a
little strip of jeans
right here and there right so so it's
very diverse
so this feels quite boring now you know
so many options so many options anyone
with an interest
in dutch chins of the period all sorts
of different things
yeah look for in images and
yeah really look at images and what i
find really difficult is that
the people who owned the most chins were
also always the most rich
they also had the most clothing but they
weren't necessarily
any portrayed engines because for them
it wasn't
their most classy fabric of course you
need to lock your chins in more the
unknown portraits and that's
you know the ones hanging in houses that
don't have online collections or
but they're much harder to find oh yes
there there's one
in the i believe it's in the skype
museum in snake so it's infrislant
um of a girl wearing a dark blue
chin's jacket just beautiful
and then there's also the sort of the
time aspect to think that that
people reuse chins for quite a long
while but
depending on what type of gown you're
making if you're making a more upper
class gown then you probably are more
likely to want
a type of of chins and sort of a style
that was more popular at the time
whereas if you're making a jacket you
can be a bit more old-fashioned
because it could have been reused or
recut sure longer
very very generally speaking even in the
netherlands you see that
the earlier you go the bigger the motifs
are as it was with silks
yeah yeah yeah i followed that trend and
some of the printed cottons near the end
are are almost
they feel more more european to us
that's a generalization but it's sort of
one thing you can keep in mind so if you
have this very very big print
and a very dainty print yeah then they'd
be less likely to be worn together
because they're not
sort of fashionable at the same time and
then you might have them both at the
same time
yeah and one would be your good
fashionable one and one will be
sort of unfashionable but i want to look
some serviceable
yeah exactly what about local tastes or
we've talked a bit about backgrounds how
the dutch really seem to love the
darkness
some of the colored grounds the red yes
and the blue grounds and
the odd rare green ground and
what we tend to see with printed cottons
whether they were
produced in india with the chin's
methods or not and the british
seem to have a lot more pale or
white or unbleached um
is that something to do with the process
or does that really come down to
different fashions
do you think i think it really comes
down to taste because they were buying
from the same
people largely so it was a customer
driven demand i i think it was really
that
yeah and the indians were very good at
that
because of knowing what was popular um
so i don't i can't really explain where
this pension for red
comes from um because if you look at
the the 17th century dutch
fashionable dress it's all black it's
all black maybe maybe it's a counter
reaction but
um the dutch all woke up one morning and
said we demand red
oh yeah i subscribed don't know
um maybe also i don't know if it was
more expensive it might have been
maybe it might also be just the market
yeah it might also be time related
because
yeah the dutch were getting used to
chains already at
the beginning of the 18th century it was
really really big
whereas for english it sort of started
only after also
the style slightly changes from this
baroque to more rococo
type of ornamentation that might also
have something to do with it then the
dutch were already
more familiar with this this red ground
and sort of they sort of kept it being
sort of the old-fashioned which at the
end of the 18th century the ecu trading
company was
not what it had been and the dutch
republic in that sense was also
politically and economically
not nearly as strong as it had been 100
years ago
they were becoming a little backwards in
the sense that where the french and and
the english were much more
looking towards the future expansion so
that might have something to do with it
as well that
the dutch clung to old styles whereas
for the english it only really started
the big hype started a bit later because
of the bands that were lifted only
afterwards
but that's that's speculation and what
you're used to and
again it's these nuances that we don't
know
how much influence these different
aspects
had the the the 17th century when i grew
up it was always called the golden age
for a very long time it has that name in
the
so it's it's the age in which you get
the classical painters remembrance right
the the
spike you get these in your trading
company it's the age in which the
republic was founded so the netherlands
officially became
his own country and it's really only now
that people are starting to sort of
change that name because
it was also the age of the slave trade
um let's face it it was good for
a number of rich people but it drove the
economy yeah
yeah um but not for everyone
but that age that has a very strong
resonance in
sort of the public consciousness of the
islands as the age of
you know when we actually mattered as a
tiny country
um so he could very well be that the
18th century fire the british campus
yes yes every modern country seems to
look
back with rose-colored glasses at these
periods when they
felt that they were at the top of their
game or something yeah yeah
yeah another thing is that sometimes
sort of old
clothing traditions sort of were
translated to chins and that's what you
you with morning for instance and in
the lobe i think you can see that very
clearly because it's this small town and
sort of there there's more chins that we
still
know of but you get this very very
dark almost it's a brown black ground
with only white bearings and that's
really heavy morning
yes um which was probably made
specifically for that
and then the lighter blue white was
probably also specifically made and then
for weddings they had
the white ground with the red red
gorgeous yeah
which they called blood and milk yes uh
it's a very i i i love that name it's
so visceral in a way these markets had
these demands for specific colors and
certain color combinations and the
meaning
that that ties and the meaning that
people sort of ascribe to it
um and then a lot of traditional costume
even today
blue and white is light morning purple
and
and right that and that still sort of
resonates
you get it in regular dress in the 19th
century as well of course but that
already existed in in the 18th century
in a large way and chins was just
adapted to fit that
style so that feeds into i know one of
the books
that we were talking about that's in
dutch that is about how chintz
sort of changed dutch life but the dutch
chants to their hearts to their homes to
their bodies in a way
that they've never you've never really
let go of where in other countries it
definitely had its peak and then gave
way to other
fashions and things with the dutch have
really adopted it and made it your own
yeah yeah and i think you see that in
words as well so
we started with this terminology thing
and then i took it really back to to
how it was made but just how
the word change is used in english is
also just to mean a busy floral pattern
yes whereas the dutch translation um
seats
so it's in time that's very close it has
the same roots
but sits just means this 18th century
fabric just
it's not used for any type of floral
it's only used for this type of cotton
coming to the present
right um the town of minnesota and
spakenburg
is a town where there are there's still
a fairly
large population of women who still wear
the traditional dress
and sort of the eye-catching piece is
really what came from this particle we
we talked about before
except it's now this wide exaggerated
yeah so it's it's very very stiff and it
sort of
folds over and it's just grown in size
like fashion fats do
because of the fabrics were still priced
they they actually
went looking for original 18th century
fabrics to turn
into these the couple up as they call it
yes um
and it's a little bit of a mixed story
because it often meant cutting up all
petticoats to make something new and
for now us died here of cutting up an
18th century chin's petticoat is
slightly horrifying and what helps me is
that
this is not a one-time project
to it's not even a one-time art project
no it's something that's extremely
treasured
in this society they have a lot of these
and most of them are made from more
modern cottons and princes and people in
that town know
who has the old 18th century one and who
knows
who has the pretty one lying in their
closet only for special days right
it's it's this highly prized thing
that's so
appreciated still yes that
um that almost makes up for it they they
have gotten
i think over the last 10 10 years they
have gotten a bit more
um uh careful in in cutting up all
pieces aware of what they have
yeah or aware of the value that it has
before they do that
the people in the museums are good to
talk to because we have to remember that
these are clothes
yeah well they're not dressed up for
tourists
um so they're closed and if you if you
want to picture
ask nicely okay if they say no then they
don't mind
most of them yeah just don't take
snapshot of them while they're walking
down the street because they're really
just wearing what they've literally worn
all their life
um so but the people in the museums are
good to talk to about it
if they have some english and that's
it's the older generation who still wear
it
the language i i definitely do see if it
could be a barrier but
most of them if you're genuinely
interested are
quite happy to talk to people um
and i think it's it's a special
thing that these old fabrics are still
treasured there and worn oh yeah which
is such a rare thing
yeah um and it will disappear in a
couple of decades
yeah and and a certain richness to life
will be lost when it goes
yeah yes it's uh
it's very double-sided because i can't
blame anyone for
changing out of something that's so
regional so specific
there's women who never dress otherwise
but if they go on holiday they take
dresses because quite frankly
they don't want to explain to everyone
that they're not a part of a dancing
group right
um i'm a part of a dancing group and
i've been abroad in traditional costumes
so i
i know yes you get the attention but
it you will lose something yeah and
think become
costume instead of clothing
for the modern 21st century
looking for chins you and i both have
our favorites but let's toss some of
them out there
um yeah yeah so i think it's it's good
also
to go back to this definition right so
the definition can you still get fabrics
that are made this way
yes um to some extent in india yes
they'll probably be block printed
instead of hand painted but they won't
look
like the european 19th century chances
because they'll have completely
different motives
but there are still craftsmen
in india using
natural dyes using the resist and and
the
and the modern based methods to make
fabrics
for that you really need to be in india
and i don't know
specific sources um but it does exist
but it doesn't look like
what we as historical costumers are
looking for which is something that
looks like the thing
yeah now there's one artist um her name
is
carrera if i'm pronouncing it right but
she's an indian artist
who specializes in hand painting fabrics
in the 18th century european style using
traditional methods
she's made some things from museums
right um
i think you can commission her i have no
clue what she costs
but i wanted to mention her because
she's the only one that i know of
who really makes chins following the
full spectrum of meanings
she would be the epitome yeah
exactly for mere mortals like yeah
exactly
i wanted to start with there because the
rest of our sources are all
you know or either american or european
in the netherlands there's
there's two main lines of fabric which
are really meant as
reproductions for ginseng the one which
i believe is is the one you're wearing
right now is fabrics.com
this is the other one so so dutch
fabrics very specifically
makes reproduction chances they
do copper plate printing they have a
factory in the netherlands and they
glaze their fabrics
my sac gown is is that is their fabric
so for me the the original chins the
18th century garments i have seen
were all glazed to some extent some of
them
to the point where you think is is that
the plastic layer covering it
it's shiny they don't coat for their
glazing it's really
a heat and pressure process which is
called colandering
now i believe that in the period they
might have used some sort of
dry starch to further the effect for me
that that's such an integral part of
what chins looks like which is really
hard to see in photos
if you've only ever seen chins in
pictures online
you know there's no fault that you don't
spot that because it's really really
hard to see unless you're there in
person you move and you see the shift in
light
but it's something that's very
characteristic to me
and and that's why i love their
reproductions because they're the only
ones that i know of that actually lays
their fabric
of of fabrics right they're a very small
large base
factory um but i think
you know in sort of production terms if
you don't want to go see india for the
hand-painted stuff
um i think they're the closest you can
get
the other line is quilting cottons
that are really specifically made with
reproduction
prints the difference is that they're
quilting columns so
the weight and the hand is different um
they're not glazed
they're a little looser in weave yes um
and actually this indian artist she
wrote an article for one of the books
it's right there on my bookshelf um
about how much it matters that you have
a very very high quality
cotton because you need fine well fine
threads
but also very finely woven for it to not
run
yeah to be really a smooth almost
paper-like surface
yes um so to get closer to that you want
this really really high quality
fabric the quilting cottons is a little
bit more
supple usually and a little bit thicker
i think
i've never handed like like physically
touched
the 18th century stuff but yeah
well i have this is this is the um the
dutch
dutch quilts and then the dutch
fabric.nl
i have both they are a similar weight
but the glazed um the hand is different
uh i believe that the dutch fabric
uh range is is more tightly woven
this is is the dutch heritage yeah range
which is readily available in the uk
they're both a pleasure to hand so yeah
absolutely but their characteristics
handling is very very different but this
is incredibly soft
the quilting yeah so that's with the
glazing you lose a bit of that soft
you do have a little bit of that
softness right but then on the other
hand you get the drape and hang
with the 18th century styles that do
involve a lot of
yardage a lot of fabric yeah it doesn't
hang
limply it really has a fantastic
sort of structure in a way yeah it just
looks right
i think that for a jacket um you can get
away more easily with the softer fabric
because more of it is close to your body
anyway
yes and because it's all closed fitted
and worn over stage you get that
structure anyway yes
whereas for a sack down um you you have
you need more of that structure in the
way it falls yeah well that's it to be
fair
the the dutch fabric line they also
they take a motif but they do make
different versions and different colors
than the original right so you could
always ask them like which which
color combination was the original and
they know a lot about the fabric so
their color combinations are always
plausible
yes but they're not always direct
reproductions of
color-wise of an excellent existing
fabric
so williamsburg i believe carries also
reproduction prints from what they have
in their collection those are
very much an anglo interpretation very
yeah so that there will be sort of
reproductions of the cottons that were
printed for that market
but nothing yeah and many of them based
on home decor
fashions in colors that weren't
typically worn for clothing but would
have been used for home decor
and i think when it comes to easy access
ikea is still one of the things to name
out because they do base a lot of their
fabric on
18th century prints the difficulty is
that some of them they change more than
others they never tell you which ones
that is
you know we can name what's out there
now but
there's always a good um community to
sort of
say okay which which is more likely
it's really really hard to judge whether
something looks authentic
and it's really difficult to put your
finger on what exactly it is that makes
something look authentic or not
um so you often see me there
there's too much green comment which i
get because you don't often see a lot of
different shades of green
ranging from yellow to too dark and and
everything in between that's not
something you see a lot of
but you do have green ground chin so
it's not like you don't have chins with
a lot of green in it
yeah yeah there are a lot of nuances
here that get lost i think
when trying to help people who are new
to
customers this period is that you want
to give them guidelines that they can
rely on
but they can go ahead and make decisions
based on and know they're not
being sort of led astray but a lot of
the nuances
do get lost yeah and a lot of the
context too
because sometimes teasing out what would
be appropriate for what
someone might have in mind involves
asking a lot more questions
that somehow sometimes they haven't just
made those decisions yet and they don't
realize
that that eva matters that have
impact on their fabric choice um
yeah so it's a hard and fast rules or
dangerous thing it can be very helpful
but especially when talking about
something
as difficult to grasp as the style of
patterns or designs i think at the end
of the day
for everyone who loves this fabric first
of all
do whatever makes you happy in whatever
context right if you choose to
have something that is a fabric that you
love and you don't need it to be
authentic for any way i'd say go for it
right um
that never matters but i find that a lot
of people do sort of want to know
like how likely would it have been i
always
in in my own costume costuming i don't
need to always be
authentic but i would always like to
know whether i'm choosing not to be
that i'm not unauthentic because i just
didn't know better
but i'm choosing not to be and it's
always a valid choice
it's informal choice so for for people
who would like to know like what what
patterns
are are really out there i think
honestly the only way to really get to
that is to look at a lot of it
yeah and to fill your head with images
of of the things and look at the
descriptions
because most museum collections will say
whether it's european cotton print or
indian
say origin indian fabric
europe uh the dress right and
look at these images and sort of look at
the dates
see how they connect realize that
fabrics were
reused for a long time so style cut
of a garment might not always completely
correspond
to you know when the fabric originated
yeah but the museums will typically say
that
um so this will set a date on the fabric
and then set the date on the gown
some do a more uh complete more detailed
yes the vna i think so it's a very good
example and they have an extensive
collection
of chintz and other printed cottons and
they will say
where it was made down to what part of
india was made
and then they may they may say this was
for the indonesian market
or this yeah or the english market or
this was for the dutch market
and then there will be an additional
date for the making of the garment
and then any further alterations or
updates that have been made and so you
have
lots of chronology to work with that
gives you i think a much more complete
knowledge of the life of this object
that is sitting here in the year 2020
and yeah and get a feeling for the
global journey
that it has been yeah yeah yeah so
i think that the right museum is pretty
good they have a good
website they have a good collection
website
um and good search um maybe we can try
to get the dutch name
seats in the description so you know
what to look for yes i will have them
yeah i'll have some if that helps
because sometimes
especially dutch museums they use just
the dark language text and then it can
be really difficult to
search if you don't don't speak the
language there's often mode news
um aggregate website which captures a
lot of collections from a lot of
different museums
um the information is sometimes quite
minimal but it gives you a starting
point
yeah so so i i really
like as a platform because it brings
together collections so at least you
have one place to search for in a
foreign language instead and they're
searching for
their search function is actually
working
well too yeah it's it's it's fairly
intuitive
yeah i mean especially if you if you're
looking for the fabric
um then just knowing seats will will get
you a long way
and then often the collection pages will
have the dutch description and you can
see what you can translate
via google brilliant this has just been
wide-ranging
chins was a pretty um ubiquitous
fabric it it it was in so many different
layers of society or in so many
different
ways and yet there is some rhyming
reason to the place and time and the
style
yeah uh which we're now sort of looking
back trying to
to pick out um just the sources
that we have yeah um but i think
it's such a beautiful textile yeah
people keep coming back to it yes
right yes so i hope everyone
enjoyed hearing a little bit more of the
background and the history
to this to this fabric and i think when
we look at these beautiful gowns and
these beautiful jackets and
things it really um
for me it really enriches the story of
that garment
to know where it came from and how
complicated his background and its story
is but also
how many how many people were involved
and how many craftsmanship and skill
was involved in all those different
stages um
so yeah i i like i said i love talking
about it
so i hope everyone enjoyed hearing about
it
it's been absolutely fantastic marissa
thank you so
so much we will have lots of information
and links
further reading and museum objects to
look at all down in the description
below
and we hope that this has been an
interesting contribution to the coco vid
extravaganza and i hope that everyone
has enjoyed it
thank you very much bye-bye thank you
so it's uh it's a very in that sense a
very complex history and
it's what i would like to know more
about most
is really the indian instructors of the
tradesmen and the craftsman
because that's really hard to get
information about
um and there might be more available if
you speak other languages
um calling chin's a problematic fabric i
think is a little bit too
too easy a story because it
chants itself as a product already
existed
people already traded it people already
were aware of that
the problematic part of
chins you can trace back to to the
european trading companies strive for
monopoly in power
um and petitioning in that process um
thought wars against the indigenous
populations but it's not
the common printers themselves
necessarily um
so does does that make chance
problematic i would say
not more so than general history is um
but it's good to be aware
of sort of its role in history and
things that came later
and the way it you know it contributed
to wealth
in other places than from where it was
made
yeah which from our modern perspective
we really
value giving honor and credit and the
money to the people
where stuff actually originates yeah and
that's not a concept which was
around um in the 17th century and that
that very clearly fed into how people
saw it and dealt with it then
um yes and it's
what's also interesting to me is that
in some ways also it's now if you look
at current situations it's sort of come
back
whereas current companies let their
things be made there because
it's cheaper again than doing it
on their own ground um so so they
they found this expensive product in
india took it away from india because it
was cheaper to
produce in their own colonies elsewhere
and then at some point when they lost
their colonies
and and their own economy have profited
it
they brought it back to to those places
the irony
be made cheap yeah it's amazing and that
now
if you want good quality cotton and if
you want it
to be printed well in
and then you have the whole layer for
historical costuming that if you wanted
in a heritage or reproduction
sort of design india is where you go
it has survived in me i'd never fully
fully disappeared and it wasn't being
driven by european tastes
no no definitely not and what has
survived has survived
really because of of internal markets
but i think it's a testament to the
resilience of the indian craftsman in
the sense that it
that it survives and i think that's
important in in this whole story as well
um is to maintain the agency of the
people
trading with the east indian company
to to recognize that these companies
have very problematic
histories and at the same time
not have the narrative be one of oh all
these poor indigenous people who
couldn't
help themselves or or something like
that because there were power structures
yes in asia as well which were never
controlled in any way
right um it wasn't good examples of that
yeah um and and i think
these craftsmen also deserve that agency
um to some extent without saying that
that sort of makes up for
atrocities elsewhere but yeah
it restores their dignity i think yeah
in people's perception they hadn't
actually lost it but our understanding
is no
yeah and i i think and and like i said
before i think this
um this concept that we have now of
respecting the artist
um and respect and respecting
craftsmanship
is something that really i think that's
a mindset that really started in the
late
19th century more than
than it existed them because you didn't
have factories so everything was
craftsmanship and
yes um that that the whole
arts and crafts movement grew out of
this
desire to be saying now go back to the
respect of
of the craftsmen um who's being in a
position to realize what you've lost and
contrast
now we have all that mechanized
production and oh and then look oh oh my
goodness
um the artisanal way um
has some advantages that we prefer
so but from that light it also it
it doesn't it makes sense that in in i
think 17th and 18th century there wasn't
this attention for the craftsmanship it
was really more about
um the traders who got who got the
credit and that makes sense within that
perspective of
how people looked at craftsmanship
within different ages and
um then we can say well
now we look at that differently and now
we want to tell the story of the people
who actually made this fabric and
highlight that and bring that
forth more so then the value really lied
just in the
finished product as a commodity as a
trading
commodity as goods yeah but not
a value on the actual expertise and the
art are
the artistic i don't think so no so
there were there were some chances that
were signed
by studios but they're quite rare you
see more
chances especially in the netherlands
which is it's the india trading company
logo like the dutch uh they'll say stan
because they sample their all the things
they imported about their stamp and
also if you look at how people in europe
talked about these goods
they were called persian indian japanese
and chinese all mixed up
people had no clue all right um
and you do see references just to east
india
trade east india company east india
company goods
yeah uh and they didn't make them but
any marks and you know in any
accreditation tracking source had to do
with tax
so it was again it was all about the
money yeah it's uh
it's it's very much a search for wealth
and that that's what drives it
and we're now changing the story from
one that says that
the people who produce the most wealth
are are you know the people we should
look up to towards
a slightly better uh i would say
perspective
um but that looks at
how they treat different people from
from different
places and cultures so i hope so
i think a more connected world where
there's a little bit more transparency
or it's harder to
for for countries that have impact on
other countries harder for them to hide
what they're doing and there's more
awareness or or if not
actual scrutiny um but yeah there's
there's yes it's still you know
clothes from from dutch or western
clothing companies i mean it's the
clothing companies that get the credit
not the government workers right so it's
something that's
that's very um
seems to be very hard to get rid of
somehow yeah i
that's that's a that's something that
needs to be explored as well
is the state of the fashion industry now
how much has changed in
any meaningful way in in terms of
posting the work who's getting paid for
it how much
the conditions and the exploitation
of course that that's a whole other
story but i do think it's
um it's interesting how by studying
historical textiles and sort of
looking at how we view these processes
with with our modern eye how much
insight that can actually give us and
what
we're doing at the same time nowadays um
you can throw the parallels there yes
it's an opportunity to to
have a look at what our fashion
consumption and buying habits
are and what what ethical or otherwise
sources supply chains and all of that
is things to think about
