the.com/chintz
Once-banned Indian cotton so addictive France made owning it a crime.
means A printed or glazed cotton fabric, usually featuring bright floral patterns — and, as an adjective ('chintzy'), something cheap, gaudy, or stingy.
from From Hindi 'chīnt' (and Sanskrit 'chitra,' meaning 'spotted' or 'variegated'), the word arrived in English in the 17th century as 'chints,' the plural of 'chint' — these spotted, painted Indian cottons. English speakers misread the plural as a singular, and 'chintz' was born. The later insult 'chintzy' — meaning shabby or miserly — grew from the fabric's eventual reputation as the cheap, mass-produced stuff of unfashionable parlors, a long fall for cloth that once provoked smuggling and royal bans.
- origin
- From Hindi chint, meaning spotted or sprayed
- french ban
- Outlawed for 73 years to protect local weavers
- colorfast trick
- Mordants made dyes survive endless washing
- insult turn
- Cheap imitations gave us the word chintzy
- royal favor
- Smuggled into wardrobes despite the prohibition
toile de jouy — french printed cotton fabric from jouy-en-josas, 18th century, featuring pastoral scenes
calico house london — historic textile merchant at 3 bermondsey street that supplied printed cottons to the british elite since 1780s
india chintz trade — gujarati hand-painted cotton fabrics exported to europe 1600s-1800s, sparked european textile manufacturing