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Original Articles

Fashion and Consumption of Painted and Printed Calicoes in the Mediterranean during the later Seventeenth Century: The Case of Chintz Quilts and Banyans in Marseilles

References

  • See, for example, the interesting issue of Histoire Urbaine coordinated by Natacha Coquery: ‘Villes, consommation, exotisme dans l’Europe atlantique, XVe–XVIIIe siècle’, Histoire Urbaine, xxx, no. 1 (2011).
  • J. L. G. Tomás, ‘Textiles asiáticos de importación en el mundo hispánico, c. 1600. Notas para la historia del consumo a la luz de la nueva historia trans-nacional’, in D. Muñoz Navarro ed., Comprar, Vender y Consumir. Nuevas Aportaciones a la Historia del Consumo en la España Moderna (València: Universitat de València, 2011), pp. 51–79; M. Perez García, ‘Les échanges transnationaux et la circulation des nouveaux produits en Méditerranée occidentale au XVIIIe siècle’, Histoire, Économie & Société, xxx, no. 1 (2011), pp. 39–55; O. Raveux, ‘The birth of a new European industry: l’indiennage in seventeenth-century Marseilles’, in G. Riello and P. Parthasarathi eds, The Spinning World. A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 291–306.
  • Anne E. McCants recently demonstrated the wealth of information on textiles available in domestic inventories in her study of eighteenth-century household inventories drawn up in Amsterdam by the Regents of the Municipal Orphanage. See A. E. McCants, ‘Modest households and globally traded textiles: evidence from Amsterdam household inventories’, in L. Cruz and J. Mokyr eds, The Birth of Modern Europe: Culture and Economy, 1400–1800, Essays in Honor of Jan De Vries (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 109–32.
  • Painted and printed calicoes reached Europe during the sixteenth century and the quantity of imports increased dramatically during the eighteenth century; see G. Riello, Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 112–13 and fig. 5.3. My thanks to the author for making several extracts available prior to publication.
  • Cotton can withstand high temperatures, take dyes easily, is more comfortable to wear than wool and remains cheaper than silk. Cotton fabrics are easier to wash than linen, although it is not clear how frequently cotton was washed in the seventeenth century.
  • For more details on this question, see B. Lemire, ‘Domesticating the exotic: floral culture and the East India calico trade with England, c. 1600–1800’, Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, i, no. 1 (2003), pp. 65–85; G. Riello, ‘Asian knowledge and the development of calico printing in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, Journal of Global History, v, no. 1 (2010), pp. 1–28; B. Lemire and G. Riello, ‘East & West: textiles and fashion in early modern Europe’, Journal of Social History, xli, no. 4 (2008), pp. 887–916; Riello and Parthasarathi, The Spinning World.
  • Riello, Cotton, p. 112.
  • See also K. Fukasawa, Toilerie et Commerce du Levant d’Alep à Marseille (Marseilles: CNRS, 1987).
  • Portugal was the first European country to establish trade in cotton fabrics with India. Indian calicoes were already popular in the second half of the sixteenth century; see B. Lemire, ‘Portugal, India and the European home: reshaping European material culture, c. 1500–1700’, in I. Mendonça ed., As Artes Decorativas e a Expansão Portuguesa: Imaginário e Viagem, Actas do II Colóquio de Artes Decorativas (Lisboa: FRESS/CCCM, i.p.), pp. 195–203.
  • J. Irwin, ‘Indian textile trade in the seventeenth century: IV foreign influences’, Journal of Indian Textile History, iv (1959), p. 57.
  • J. Styles, ‘Product innovation in early modern London’, Past and Present, 168 (2000), p. 133; Letter, 7 April 1686, C 2/193, Archives Nationales, Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence.
  • Manuscrit de Roques, supplément français 3.191 fols 184–92 and Mémoire de Monsieur d’Ortières, manuscrit français, 7.174, fol. 460, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; see also W. Floor, ‘The import of Indian textiles into Safavid Persia’, Eurasian Studies, v, nos 1–2 (2006), p. 119.
  • Letters sent from Smyrna by the Marseilles trading company Tiran & Rampal demonstrate these practices; Tiran & Rampal letters, 1679-1683, 9 B 175, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseilles.
  • The same source mentions Fabron, a merchant from Marseilles who went to Persia during the summer of 1679 ‘in order to have made beautiful processed calicoes’; letter to J. Tiran, 21 July 1679, 9 B 175, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseilles.
  • Mémoire de l’état présent du négoce de Smyrne, 1688, manuscript français 7.174, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
  • Riello, Cotton, p. 126.
  • See the famous quotation by Daniel Defoe referring to the practice of the elegant classes in England: ‘the chintz was advanced from lying upon their floors to their backs’, Weekly Review, January 1708.
  • B. Lemire, Cotton (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2011), pp. 44–45.
  • The play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme was performed for the first time in 1670.
  • Riello, Cotton, pp. 112–13.
  • N. McKendrick, ‘The consumer revolution of eighteenth-century England’, in N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb eds, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London: Europa, 1982), pp. 9–33.
  • This was a military dockyard whose galleys were crewed by prisoners and Ottoman slaves; see A. Zysberg, Marseille au Temps du Roi-Soleil, la Ville, les Galères, l’Arsenal (Marseilles: Jeanne Laffitte, 2007).
  • See, for instance, L. Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660–1760 (London and New York: Routledge, 1988).
  • Probate inventory, Gaspard Guilhaud,1692, 2 B 806, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseilles.
  • For a more detailed history of this product, see Lemire, Cotton, Chapter 5.
  • O. Teissier, Meubles et Costumes (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles) (Paris: 1904), p. 10.
  • Lemire, Cotton, p. 104.
  • On this question, see Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of class distinction; P. Bourdieu, La Distinction: Critique Sociale du Jugement (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1996). Here, Bourdieu describes how consumption patterns and choices act as social markers and define identities. They offer members of the upper classes opportunities for establishing class distinctions. The middle class follow the same strategy in order to distinguish themselves from the lower classes and copy the tastes and consumption preferences of the élite. As a result, the upper classes seek to avoid this class imitation by finding new habits and objects of consumption.
  • S. Dubuisson-Quellier, ‘La consommation comme pratique sociale’, in P. Steiner and F. Vatin eds, Traité de Sociologie Économique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2009), p. 728; for the importance of shopkeepers in developing and maintaining fashion markets, see B. Blondé, N. Coquery, J. Stobart and I. Van Damme eds, Fashioning Old and New: Changing Consumer Patterns in Western Europe (1650–1900) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009).
  • Decision of the Commercial Court of Marseilles, 12 December 1667, 13 B 33, fol. 6v, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseilles.
  • Decisions of the Commercial Court of Marseilles, 13 September 1667 and 14 October 1675, 13 B 36, fol. 390v and 13 B 37, fol. 411, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseilles.
  • H. Chobaut, ‘L’industrie des indiennes à Marseille avant 1680’, Mémoires de l’Institut Historique de Provence, xvi (1939), pp. 81–95.
  • Records of Parliamentary debates, 1662, B 54, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseilles.
  • E. Homburg, ‘From colour maker to chemist: episodes from the rise of the colourist, 1670–1800’, in R. Fox and A. Nieto Gálan eds, Natural Dyestuffs and Industrial Culture in Europe, 1750–1880 (Canton: Watson Publishing Group, 1999), p. 221 and Raveux, ‘Birth of a new European industry’.
  • For example, in August 1679, the Armenian manufacturer Dominique Ellia promised ‘to teach [his partner Hugues Grand] his secret for painting cotton fabrics as they are painted in the Levant without his having to become master’, see O. Raveux, ‘L’Orient et l’aurore de l’industrialisation occidentale: une lecture à travers la trajectoire de Dominique Ellia, indienneur constantinopolitain à Marseille (1669–1683)’, in C. Maitte, P. Minard and M. de Oliveira eds, La Pluralité des Mondes Industriels (XVIIe–XIXe siècle): Faire de l’Histoire avec Gérard Gayot (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012), pp. 99–104.
  • Notarial act, 2 November 1677, 392 E 102, fol. 1.214, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseilles and see Raveux, ‘L’Orient et l’aurore de l’industrialisation occidentale’.
  • A. Puech, ‘Les Nîmois dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle’, Mémoires de l’Académie de Nîmes, x (1887), pp. 133–34.
  • Ibid.
  • For example, the list of ships leaving Marseilles for the coasts of Spain and Italy (I 1, Archives de la Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Marseille, Marseilles) shows that the Saint-Joseph left for Naples with ‘a case of chintz quilts’ and ‘three cases of calicoes and banyans’ in January and July 1680, the Sainte-Anne sailed for Genoa with ‘a bale of banyans’ in September 1683, the Notre-Dame de Mont Carmel set sail for Cadiz with ‘6 bales of chintz quilts’ in January 1680 and the Saint-Antoine left for Valencia with ‘chintz quilts’ in January 1683.
  • Letter of the Municipal Councillors of Marseilles, 24 March 1689, BB 356, Archives Communales de Marseilles.
  • The embroidered white quilt was another successful Marseilles cotton product, exported throughout Europe at the end of the seventeenth century; see K. Berenson, Marseilles: The Cradle of White Corded Quilting (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, Lincoln Quilt Study Center & Museum, 2010).
  • On 5 October 1691, for example, Grégoire de Constant loaded nineteen large and two small Levantine chintz quilts onto the Notre-Dame du Rosaire sailing to Genoa. C 123, 1691, Archives de la Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Marseilles, Marseilles).
  • Numerous cotton banyans were mentioned in the inventory of goods bequeathed by Arattone di Arachelle to his brother Ovanes in September 1678 in Genoa; see M. Bellezza Rosina and M. Cataldi Gallo, Cotoni Stampati e Mezzari dalle Indie all’Europa (Genova: SAGEP editrice, 1993), pp. 72–73. At the same period, Arapié d’Arachel was a manufacturing merchant in Marseilles; see Raveux, ‘L’Orient et l’aurore de l’industrialisation occidentale’. They apparently belonged to the same family.
  • Rose-red colour of the flower of the amaranth plant.
  • A. Pardailhé-Galabrun, La Naissance de l’Intime: 3.000 Foyers Parisiens, XVIIe–XVIIIe Siècles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988) and D. M. Mitchell, ‘“My purple will be too sad for that melancholy room”: furnishings for interiors in London and Paris, 1660–1735’, Textile History, xl, no. 1 (2009), pp. 3–28.
  • Note on Trade in the Levant, 1682, B III 234, Archives Nationales, Paris.
  • J. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London: Thames & Hudson, 1993).
  • See Raveux, ‘Birth of a new European industry’ and ‘L’Orient et l’aurore de l’industrialisation occidentale’.
  • Apparently, there is contrary evidence elsewhere, particularly in Holland. A doll’s house with a bedroom decorated in vividly red cotton, dated 1675, in the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam) offers an interesting example. See E. Hartkamp-Jonxis, Sits: Oost-west Relaties in Textiel (Zwolle: Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst, 1987) and E. Hartkamp-Jonxis, Sitsen uit India (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1994). See Rijksmuseum, Dolls Houses (Online, 2013). Available from: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/explore-the-collection/works-of-art/dolls-houses [Accessed: March 2013].
  • Lemire, ‘Domesticating the exotic’, p. 69 and G. Riello, ‘The Indian apprenticeship: the trade of Indian textiles and the making of European cottons’, in G. Riello and R. Tirthankar eds, How India Clothed the World: Cotton Textiles and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 309–46.
  • J. Irwin, ‘Origins of the “Oriental Style” in English decorative art’, The Burlington Magazine, xcvii, no. 625 (1955), p. 109.
  • Letter to G. Rampal, 12 June 1679, 9 B 175, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseilles.
  • Letter to F. Garnier, 21 July 1679, 9 B 175, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseilles.
  • Letter to J. Tiran, 10 November 1679, 9 B 175, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseilles.
  • J. Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire Universel de Commerce (Paris: J. Étienne, 1730), iii, p. 607.
  • Manuscript written by Jean Ryhiner, 1766, Musée de l’Impression sur Étoffes, Mulhouse.
  • M. Ferrières, Le Bien des Pauvres: la Consommation Populaire en Avignon, 1600–1800 (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2004), p. 241.
  • See Riello, Cotton, pp. 126–34.
  • The inventory in Table 3 shows that it was often a garment for both men and women.
  • J. Kirkness, Le Français du Théâtre Italien d’après le Recueil de Gerhardi, 1681–1697 (Genève: Droz, 1971), p. 201.

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