COROMANDEL COAST, EAST INDIA, FIRST HALF 18TH CENTURY

Palampores are large chintzes, which were laid on a bed or hung behind it. The word palampore is an Anglicisation of palang-posh or bedcover, which describes the principal use of these export cloths. Painted and printed cloths with a flowering tree or large-scale floral design were in demand both in Europe and in Asia, where they circulated in Indonesia in the eighteenth century and later. Our palampore was probably produced for the Asian market. The filler motifs on this palampore relate to those seen on Japanese painted and stencilled cottons or north-coast Javanese batik designs. These stylistic links to centres famous for the production of resist-painted and printed cottons reflect the artistic interchange through trade routes, and the idea of textiles being commissioned for export. It was probably the Dutch that introduced Japanese patterns to the Coromandel Coast as they maintained a monopoly on trade with Japan in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Dutch also played a significant role in the dissemination of Indian motifs through trade with the Indonesian archipelago.

A related palampore, for the Sri Lankan market, is in the Metropolitan Museum (Amelia Peck, Interwoven Globe. The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2014, no.37, p.187). That is dated to the first quarter of the 18th century. Another, dated circa 1725-50 and with a similar though bifurcated mound is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (IS.36-1950; Rosemary Crill, Chintz: Indian Textiles for the West, 2008, pl.9, p.43).