Beyond The Chador Regional Dress From Iran
8. VLISCO and Asian textiles
The Dutch company of Vlisco was founded in 1846 when Pieter Fentener van Vlissingen bought an existing textile printing factory in the town of Helmond. At that time the company was called P. Fentener van Vlissingen & Co. after its new owner.
The initial aim of the company was to produce and sell hand block-printed material within The Netherlands and elsewhere. Initially, they produced chintz style cloth and furnishing fabrics, as well as kerchiefs and bedspreads.
Following the invention of roller printing techniques to print designs on cloth in the late 18th century, and the further development of these techniques in the early 19th century, it became possible to reproduce a wide range of designs cheaply and in quantity.
The company soon changed from hand to machine printing and started to export imitation batiks to what was then the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). These textiles were much cheaper than those that were produced locally, and eventually these imitations were banned from the East Indies. The company was then obliged to look for new markets for their goods.
Since the early 19th century, Dutch trading companies had been involved in selling hand-printed textiles in West Africa (some parts of which were a Dutch colony in the 19th century), including items produced by Fentener’s company. So it was a natural development for the company to start sending their roller printed batik-style cloth to this vast market.
In addition, many West Africans had served as soldiers in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army and so were familiar with Indonesian batiks. Returning soldiers responded enthusiastically to the appearance of Indonesian-style batik designs in their home countries and so started a new trend in some West African markets.
In 1927 the company changed its name to Vlisco, a contraction of Vlissingen & Co., but by this time their printed cloth had become widely known as 'Dutch Wax' or 'Wax Hollandais', and these names were also adopted.
From 1963 onwards, all Vlisco fabrics had the text 'Guaranteed Dutch Wax Vlisco' stamped on the border. The company is still based in Helmond and is still producing roller printed textiles, both for the Asian and the West African markets.
7. Some Asian influences in the 19th and 20th centuries
Japan became a major influence on northern European art and design at the end of the 19th century, when a craze for ‘all things Japanese’ (Japonism) swept across Europe. The influence of this movement can be seen in artworks by Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, James Whistler and Gustav Klimt, as well as interior design and furniture.
Garments based on Japanese kimonos became popular for fashionable women to wear at home (compare the French word 'japon' for a woman's dress). Japanese textiles designed for the Western market became popular and included items such as lingerie bags, in which ladies kept silk underwear, stockings and handkerchiefs. Many items in this exhibition reflect this continuing fascination with Japan.
Indonesian textiles were exported to The Netherlands during the period of Dutch colonial rule from the seventeenth century onwards. Some textiles arrived in the form of presents and souvenirs, others as commercial exports of household items and garments. Some textiles retained their original Indonesian forms, others were adaptations of Dutch forms produced using Indonesian techniques, such as Dutch lions and naval anchors worked in ikat.
6. The Kashmiri shawl and the ‘Paisley’ motif
The Himalayan goat grows a fine ‘under fleece’ that enables it to survive the Himalayan winters. This under-fleece (cashmere) is woven by Kashmiri weavers into beautifully fine and soft shawls, traditionally decorated with colourful supplementary weft threads or with embroidery on a white ground.
Kashmir shawls were much sought-after export items to the West. As such they were naturally copied by Western manufacturers. The first copies seem to have been woven in Edinburgh during the early 1800s, but production was sub-contracted to weavers in Paisley, near Glasgow. Paisley became the centre of the ‘Paisley Shawl’ industry, making cheaper, Jacquard-loom woven copies of Indian originals.
The Paisley shawl developed its own fashion culture. White-ground ‘kirking’ shawls were worn to church for events such as christenings. Shawls with a black ground were worn by widows and for more sombre occasions.
A popular motif on the original Kashmir shawl is the buteh, or tear-drop shaped motif. These can be very simple, or highly ornate. It is this motif, which may have originated in Iran, that was also copied by Scottish weavers and became widely known as the Paisley motif.
The Paisley shawl was itself imitated by other manufacturers, including Dutch companies. In The Netherlands this type of cloth is known as worteldoek (‘carrot cloth’) after the characteristic orange-red colour of the material. Many of these textiles were used well into the 20th century, especially as mantlepiece covers.
5. Chintz
Another form of painted and printed cotton textile, which was known as chintz (called sits in Dutch), became especially popular in the 17th century and was widely used for clothing, especially for dresses. ‘Chintz’ is a word with multiple meanings that embody a dialogue between East and West.
The original chintz was cotton fabric made in India and hand-painted with colourful designs on a white ground. Later the production was streamlined using block-printing of mordant-resist dyes combined with hand painting. These textiles often had a shiny finish (calendering) created by polishing the cloth. These textiles were imported from India to Europe in large quantities during the 1700s and became very popular for clothing and interior design.
Initially, European textile manufacturers found it hard to copy Indian chintz, and their frustration spilled over into attempts to ban its importation, but by the 18th century many chintzes were being exported to The Netherlands (especially Hindeloopen in Friesland) and from there re-exported to other countries, notably England and France. Later the Europeans made their own copies and re-interpretations using hand-painting and printed forms.
Eventually, the Indian designs were absorbed into European culture, appearing in altered form in wallpaper, pottery, and other media. Such were the quantities of these goods that ‘chintzy’ eventually became a derogatory term. Chintz-derived motifs are still a staple of textile design, and the production of chintz fabrics continues to this day.
3. Maritime routes
Another important element in the movement of textiles were the maritime routes centred on India that carried textiles to Indonesia, China and eventually to Japan, as well as from India via the Red Sea to the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
Many of the textiles transported to the West were made of cotton and were decorated in a variety of ways, with woven ornamentation, dyed or block printed. These textiles, which include the types known as ‘chintz’, were especially popular from the medieval period onwards. Indian printed garments can still be found today in European markets and shops.
Indian printed textiles were a major commodity for the (British) East India Company (established in 1600) and the (Dutch) Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (1602). These enterprises would lay the foundations for the British and Dutch colonial empires in South and Southeast Asia.
One of the earliest recorded Indian textiles (a kantha quilt) was noted in the 1601 inventory of household furnishings ordered by Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury (click here). The region of Bengal is particularly known for such quilts, which were traded from the sixteenth century onwards by the Portuguese (the so-called Satgaon quilts).
2. The taqueté ‘family’ of weaves
One particular group of textiles that were transported along the Silk Roads were Chinese multi-coloured silk textiles that were woven with a dominant warp, whereby the weft threads remained hidden (warp-faced compound weaves). Examples of these (Chinese) textiles have been found at various sites in the Middle East, such as at Dura Europos and Palmyra, while other fragments were discovered further east along the Silk Roads in Xinjiang, western China (compare TRC 2000.0009).
Interestingly, by the 3rd century AD weavers in Central Asia developed a new, but related technique, namely that of weft-faced compound weaves (often in wool), whereby the warp threads remained hidden. This was a more versatile and easier technique for making luxurious textiles. Examples of weft-faced compound weaves in wool were excavated at Niya in western China by Sir Aurel Stein in 1900 and 1924, at the same site where he also unearthed warp-faced examples.
Weft-faced textiles soon started to be woven in both Sassanian Persia (later Iran) and in Roman Egypt, and in the opposite direction, also in China of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). They were still being woven in these countries at the end of the 20th century, nearly two thousand years after they had first been introduced (compare TRC 2019.1870).
Fragment of warp-faced compound weave silk cloth from the site of Niya in western China, 2nd century AD (TRC 2000.0009). Click on the image for more information.
The earliest 'western' types of weft-faced compound weaves were made of wool and cotton (Persia), and were often used as floor coverings (zilu). In the Roman Empire and later in Egypt the textiles were made from linen with wool (curtains), and wool (mattresses, bed coverings, wall hangings, cushions). These Egyptian forms continued to be made in the medieval period, as shown by finds from the mid-13th century excavations at Quseir al-Qadim and Qasr Ibrim.
Weft-faced compound floor covering (zilu) from Iran, c. 2000 (TRC 2019.1870). Click on the image for more information.
It is known from written accounts and discoveries of textiles that by the 13th century the Iranian and Egyptian forms were being produced on very different types of looms. The Persian cloths were made on the large upright zilu loom, while fine silks were produced in Egypt on horizontal drawlooms. Such drawlooms were also used in India (jaala looms) for weft-faced weaves. In China, related types of weft-faced silk textiles were made on Chinese drawlooms from around the 10th century onwards.
By the 19th century items made in Iran on the zilu looms were used mainly for floor coverings, especially in public places such as mosques, while the much finer, Egyptian versions were often simply used as bed and divan coverings.
1. Introduction
A continuous fascination with exotic and unusual textiles with different textures, colours and designs has for milleniia stimulated the trade in cloth and garments between Asia and Europe. This exchange began thousands of years ago and is still active today.
The most famous trade routes are the so-called ‘Silk Roads’, which stretched from China to the eastern Mediterranean, by land and by sea. This series of routes was used from about the 3rd century BC to the 14th century AD.
One of the main items carried along the Silk Roads were the silk textiles that were coveted by the rich and caused anxieties about ‘conspicuous consumption’ among the Romans. Silk is both valuable and portable, and makes an ideal medium for trade and exchange.
It should not be thought that objects travelled in one direction only: Persian textiles moved to the east along the routes to China, and influenced Chinese designs and weaving techniques. And although considerable attention in literature has focussed on the land routes going from east to west and vice versa, there were many trade routes that went from north to south, and south to north, and routes that went by sea around the coast of India to North Africa.
Not surprisingly, Asian-inspired motifs appeared on woven and printed textiles produced in Europe, some of which are direct copies of imports, others of which were ‘fantasy’ re-imaginings of the ‘exotic East’. These included Chinese, Indian, Persian as well as Ottoman imagery.
A wide range of textiles printed with Oriental motifs, for example, were popular in Europe in the late 18th century, and especially in the 19th century. Some of these found their way into Dutch regional dress, notably the chintz-based outfits worn by women in Hindelopen (Friesland), and the chest panels worn by girls and women from the island of Marken, Noord-Holland.
A parallel exchange took place in ceramic designs, with Delft wares imitating Chinese designs and China-made ceramics imitating European and Middle Eastern motifs.
7. Two pieces of black Chantilly lace
Two pieces of black Chantilly lace. Left: TRC 2018.0098b, right: TRC 2018.0109 In this example we have two pieces of black Chantilly lace. They have a similar pattern with sprigs of flowers, which was fashionable in the second half of the 19th century. Both pieces are made out of dull black silk (grenadine).
The handmade lace (TRC 2018.0098b) is worked as a continuous-thread bobbin lace. The machine made lace (TRC 2018.0109) is made on the Pusher machine. Both examples are the same from front and back side.
Filling : In the handmade example, every circle has a independent structure of fillings. We can see pinholes inside the frame of the circle. The orientation of the threads adapts to the defined direction of the pattern, the half stitch is more open and regular in appearance. In both examples the circle is surrounded by the gimp. In the machine lace example, the half stitch has a more consistent and steady direction of the threads with a strong impression of parallel lines.
Gimp: In these two examples the gimp does look very similar because in machine made lace it was darned in by hand.
Ground: The Pusher machine perfectly imitates the ground of Chantilly bobbin lace/Lille ground. Differences of the ground can be noticed in the larger areas without the pattern. The ground of this handmade piece is more irregular, while the machine made example shows mostly identical meshes.
Side: The two examples look the same from both sides.
| Handmade lace: | Machine-made lace: | |
 TRC 2018.0098b |  TRC 2018.0109 |
5. Two pieces of Venetian lace imitation
Two pieces of Venetian lace imitation. Top: TRC 2007.0559, bottom: TRC 2007.0595We have two lace examples from the beginning of the 20th century, which imitate the style of 17th century Venetian lace. The stylised flowers and leaves are joined by bars/braids to which picots are added. The handmade lace (TRC 2007.0559) is a needlepoint and the machine made example (TRC 2007.0595) is a chemical lace.
Filling: The floral pattern of the handmade piece is filled with several types of buttonhole stitches. The chemical lace is an embroidery on which we can clearly see machine lock stitches. This lace looks neat from a distance, but with magnification the outlines show a certain fuzziness.
Gimp: In the handmade pieces, the edges are decorated with a raised work and are worked as a separate layer on top of the filling. Various thickness is used to outline different parts of the flower. The raised work in the machine made lace is formed by rows of dense stitches that lie on the same surface as the rest of the pattern.
Ground: In both cases the floral motifs are connected by bars/braids. The bars of the handmade lace look solid and regular. The buttonhole stitches are clearly visible with even edges. In the machine made example the stitches of the bars are loose, and do not have a common structure.
Side: The front side of the handmade lace is decorated with raised work and the back side is flat. The machine made piece is equal on both sides.
| Handmade lace: | Machine-made lace: | |
 TRC 2007.0559 |  TRC 2007.0595 |
4. Two pieces of airy lace
Two pieces of airy lace. Top: TRC 2015.0294, bottom: TRC 2017.0085Here we have two pieces of airy lace with a floral design in the style of Belgium rosalin lace, which were widely used at the end of the 19th / beginning of the 20th century. Both designs are composed of small motifs with crinkly edges and raised work, which is spread equally over the lace. The handmade piece (TRC 2015.0294) is a partial bobbin lace, the shapes are made separately and connected later. It is made out of linen thread. The machine made example (TRC 2017.0085) is a chemical lace made out of cotton.
Filling: Both examples have crinckly edges with tiny circular buds decorated with raised rings. In the handmade piece rings are made with a needle buttonhole stitches and added on top of the bobbin lace. In the machine made lace the raised work is executed together with the main pattern and the embroidery machine lock stitches are clearly visible.
Gimp: There is no gimp in both examples.
Ground: In both cases the floral motifs are connected between each other. In the handmade piece there is some space between shapes and they are connected by long bars. The machine made piece has almost no bars, therefore the motifs are tightly joined.
Side: The handmade lace has a raised work on the front, used mainly for the floral centres. The machine made piece has no specific front or back.
| Handmade lace: | Machine-made lace: | |
 TRC 2015.0294 |  TRC 2017.0085 |
