For the chintz is the tapisserie d'aubusson of the peasant—it covers his chairs and drapes his windows, giving warmth and wealth of colour to the otherwise barren appearance of his cottage. Further, it reflects his simple horticultural tastes, for the brilliantly coloured roses, pansies, and convolvuluses which shine prominently on the glazed surface of the cloth are those flowers which are always to be found in his garden.
Chintz or printed cotton is the only decorative fabric known to the village upholsterer. When persons of wealth hung their windows with silk brocades and covered their chairs with costly needlework and damasks, the rural cabinet-maker was supplying his modest clientèle with these homely patterns printed upon common cloth.
These unassuming fabrics were as much cherished by the cottagers as anything which they possessed. The classical ornament of expensive silks they did not understand, and the freely treated birds and flowers which figured on chintz represented the Alpha and Omega of beauty in textile design.
So great, indeed, is the fascination of these for the cottagers that to-day, in districts less penetrated by modern advance, the rural populace will not extend their affections to the up-to-date designs of upholsterers, but insist upon the old spot and sprig patterns of their ancestors.
There is much wisdom in the conservative taste of the peasant, for the old chintz of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was of the highest artistic merit. In the heyday of its fame the fabric was exceedingly fashionable amongst the richest persons, and there are abundant records of the popularity of old English chintzes upon the Continent. For, at its best periods, the chintz was not a base imitation of more expensive fabrics; it did not, for instance, occupy the relationship of pewter to silver or moulded composition to genuine woodcarving. On the contrary, the designing of chintzes is an art of distinction, governed by canons which bear little relationship to other decorative textile crafts. For where the silk-weaver is confined to solid patterns which will appear in his transverse threads, the printer of cloths can wander unrestrained into designs of wonderful intricacy and beauty: every colour in nature he can imitate, and no object is too delicate or too rich to stamp upon his cotton. Indeed, his art stops little short of that of the painter of pictures.
OLD TRADE CARD SHOWING CALICO PRINTERS AT WORK.
"Jacob Stampe living at ye Sighn of the Callico Printer in Hounsditch Prints all sorts of Callicoes Lineings Silkes Stuffs New or Ould at Reasonable Rates."
(From old print at British Museum.)