What Is Chintz?

How is chintz made?

Chintz is made in one of two ways: by hand, drawing mordants and resists onto cotton and dyeing it in stages, as Indian craftspeople made the original cloth, or by machine, printing a plain cotton and polishing its face with a friction calender. Both carry the name, but they are very different products.

Hand-painted Indian chintz

The Indian method rests on mordants, substances that bind dye to fibre and make it colourfast. The Met describes the sequence:

1. The cotton is bleached, historically with lemon or lime and sheep’s dung, then soaked in buffalo milk so the colours will not bleed.
2. A painter draws the design in mordant with a bamboo pen called a kalam.
3. The cloth is dipped in a red dye made from chay root. Only the mordanted areas keep colour after rinsing: alum mordant gives red, iron mordant gives black.
4. Blue works the other way round. Wax covers everything except the areas meant to be blue before the cloth goes into indigo, the same resist principle used in batik.
5. Repeated bleaching, dyeing and rinsing follow, and the finished cloth is polished to a gloss.

The work was divided: the painter traced the lines, while the dyer adjusted the dyebaths, controlling their acidity or alkalinity with citrus, lime and ash. Chay root grew in the calcium-rich soil of southeastern India’s river deltas. Kalamkari, literally “pen-work”, is still practised in Machilipatnam and Srikalahasti in Andhra Pradesh. Writing on the V&A’s blog in 2015, the Bengaluru chintz maker Renuka Reddy said she went there in search of a craftsman and found that the practice of wax resist had been completely lost. Natural dyes were still used there, though often replaced with alizarin and synthetic indigo.

Mill-made glazed chintz

Modern chintz is converted from print cloth or sheeting, printed or dyed, then glazed. For fully glazed chintz, a padding machine applies a finishing solution that stiffens the cloth; it is partly dried and friction calendered, which polishes the face. Semi-glazed (half-glazed) chintz skips the stiffener and is only friction calendered.

Where does chintz come from?

Chintz comes from India, and it was already an established trade cloth when Portuguese traders brought it to Europe in the 16th century. In the 17th century, chintz was produced along the Coromandel Coast of southeastern India, a region with a long history of Indian Ocean trade. In India the cloth was called chīnt, and in Iran čīt.

After the Dutch East India Company (VOC) won its trade monopoly in 1602, Dutch merchants used Indian cotton as currency for goods such as Indonesian spices. Chintz also travelled on Spanish galleons to the Americas, where it was known as indianillas.

Bans and imitations

European governments restricted the imports. France restricted the production and import of these cottons in 1686. In Britain, weavers protested that chintz endangered local production, and an Act of 1721 prohibited the import of Indian chintzes. The rules were not airtight: the V&A holds bed hangings sent from India to the actor David Garrick around 1774, which customs impounded and released only after an exchange of letters. Imitation had already begun: in Sara J. Kadolph’s account, French craftsmen started copying the patterns because they were so popular, and later efforts to print the cloth faster and more cheaply led to new mechanised printing methods.

Chintz as dress

In the Frisian town of Hindeloopen in the Netherlands, women wore the wentke, a long open coat with a fitted bodice and full skirt. Inventories record it from 1626, first in dark wool; by 1750 chintz wentkes were common for summer and festive wear. Since the 19th century, the word has also been used for a style of floral decoration, found on chintzware and wallpaper as well as cloth.

What are the properties of chintz?

Glazed chintz is a firm, medium- to heavyweight plain-weave cloth with a shiny face and a dull back, usually all cotton or a cotton and polyester blend. Britannica describes it as frequently a highly glazed printed calico.

• Surface: the shine comes from the finish, not the weave. This is different from sateen, where the lustre is built into the weave itself.
• Handle: fully glazed chintz is stiffened by its finishing compound; semi-glazed chintz, which is only calendered, has no stiffener.
• Durability of the shine: a starch- or wax-based glaze is temporary, while a resin-based glaze is permanent. Even so, the glaze may dull with use.
• Uses: curtains, slipcovers and light upholstery, and sometimes dresses, skirts, blouses and children’s clothes.
• Finishes for furnishing: chintz made for upholstery often carries a soil- and stain-resistant finish.
• Colour: in hand-made Indian chintz, mordant dyeing is what fixes the colour in the cloth.

How is chintz measured?

Chintz has no grading system; it is specified by yarn size, thread count and level of glaze. Typical values for glazed chintz:

How does chintz appear on a clothing label?

Chintz is the name of a cloth and finish, not a fibre, so a label lists the fibre content instead, typically 100% cotton or a cotton and polyester blend. The care instructions are the more useful clue: permanently finished chintz can be machine washed and dried, so a “dry clean only” instruction suggests a temporary glaze.

How do you tell good chintz from poor chintz?

Good chintz shows a clear contrast between a polished face and a dull back, a glaze that suits how the piece will be cleaned, and, if it claims to be hand-made, the marks of pen and wax. Check these points:

• Turn it over. The face should be shiny and the back dull. A cloth with no shine at all is unglazed; that cloth is properly called cretonne.
• Squeeze a corner. Fully glazed chintz feels stiffened by its finish; semi-glazed chintz is softer because it has no stiffener. Neither is wrong, but you should know which one you are buying.
• Read the care label. Machine-washable chintz has a permanent finish. Otherwise dry cleaning is needed to preserve the glaze.
• Count the threads. With a pick glass over 1 inch, standard glazed chintz has 64 to 80 warp yarns. A count well below that means a looser cloth than standard chintz.
• On vintage pieces, look at the shine. Patchy or lost gloss often means a starch- or wax-based glaze has worn away, though any glaze can dull with use.
• On hand-painted chintz, look closely at the lines. Outlines were drawn in a thin, iron-based black dye, and blue areas made with wax resist can show fine veins where indigo seeped through the wax.
• Ask about the dyes. “Hand-painted” does not guarantee natural dyes: in the kalamkari centres of Andhra Pradesh, natural dyes were often replaced with alizarin and synthetic indigo by 2015.

How do you care for chintz?

Clean chintz according to its glaze: resin-finished chintz can be machine washed and dried, and other chintz should be dry cleaned to preserve the glaze. Follow the care label, and expect any glaze to dull gradually with use. Starch and wax glazes are temporary, so do not expect them to survive washing.

Is chintz sustainable?

There is no single answer, because chintz names a look and a finish rather than a fibre or a process, and none of the sources consulted measures its environmental impact. Mill chintz is cotton or cotton/polyester with a stiffening or resin finish. Hand-made chintz uses plant dyes such as chay and indigo with milk, dung bleaching and repeated rinsing, yet in the kalamkari centres of Andhra Pradesh natural dyes were often replaced with alizarin and synthetic indigo by 2015. The honest step is to ask what the fibre, dyes and finish are, and to treat “natural” claims as questions rather than answers.