THE CALICO-PRINTER.
1. Calico-printing is a combination of the arts of dyeing, engraving, and printing, wherewith colors are applied in definite figures. This art is applicable to woven fabrics, and chiefly to those of which the material is cotton.
2. The first object, after preparing the stuffs, as in dyeing, is to apply a mordant to those parts of the piece which are to receive the color. This is now usually done by means of a steel or copper cylinder, on which have been engraved the proposed figures, as on plates for copperplate-printing.
3. During the printing, the cylinder, in one part of its revolution, becomes charged with the mordant, the superfluous part of which is scraped off by a straight steel edge, leaving only the portion which fills the lines of the figures. As the cylinder revolves, the cloth comes into forcible contact with it, and receives the complete impression of the figures, in the pale color of the mordant.
4. The cloth, after having been washed and dried, is passed through the coloring bath, in which the parts previously printed, become permanently dyed with the intended color. Although the whole piece receives the dye, yet, by washing the cloth, and bleaching it on the grass in the open air, the color is discharged from those parts not impregnated with the mordant.
5. By the use of different mordants, successively applied, and a single dye, several colors are often communicated to the same piece of cloth; thus, if stripes are first made with the acetate of alumina, and then others with the acetate of iron, a coloring bath of madder will produce red and brown stripes. The same mordants, with a dye of quercitron bark, give yellow and olive or drab.
6. Sometimes, the second mordant is applied by means of engravings on wooden blocks. Cuts, designed for this purpose, are engraved on the side of the grain, and not on the end, like those for printing books.
7. Calico-printing, so far as chemical affinities are concerned, is the same with dyeing. The difference consists, chiefly, in the mode of applying the materials, so as to communicate the desired tints and figures. The dye-stuffs, most commonly employed by calico-printers, are indigo, madder, and quercitron bark; by a dexterous application of these and the mordants, a great variety of colors can be produced. Indigo, being a substantive color, does not require the aid of mordants, but, like them, when other dyes are used, is applied directly to the cloth, sometimes by the engraved cylinder or block, and at others with the pencil by hand.
8. Calico-printing was practised in India twenty-two centuries ago, when Alexander the Great visited that country with his victorious army. The operation was then performed with a pencil. This method is still used in the East to the exclusion of every other. The art was also practised in Egypt in Pliny's time.
9. Calicoes were first brought to England in the year 1631. They derive their name from the city of Calicut, whence they were first exported to Europe. This branch of business was introduced into London in the year 1676. Since that time, it has been encouraged by several acts of Parliament; but it never became extensive in England, until the introduction of machinery for spinning cotton. It is supposed, that the amount of cottons annually printed in the United States, cannot be less than twenty millions of yards.