Matthew Thomas
Senior Specialist
Lot 118
A chintz Palampore for the European market depicting a Tree of Life Coromandel Coast, South India, late 18th/ early 19th Century
6 October 2015, 14:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £4,000 inc. premium
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A chintz Palampore for the European market depicting a Tree of Life
Coromandel Coast, South India, late 18th/ early 19th Century
Coromandel Coast, South India, late 18th/ early 19th Century
cotton, resist-painted and mordant-dyed, on cream ground, the decoration consisting of two central entwined flowering tree bearing large exotic blooms, rising from a rocky mound with quadrupeds depicted in twos and threes, framed with an elegant scrolling tendril, wide borders on three sides with scrolling floral vines, missing top border
258 x 214 cm.
258 x 214 cm.
Footnotes
An earlier comparable example, dated to circa 1770 - 80, is in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (IM.226-1921). According to R. Crill, the trees seen on palampores exhibit distinctly Chinese influences in the third quarter of the 18th century as a result of the vogue for Chinese wallpapers with similar designs (R. Crill, Chintz: Indian Textiles for the West, London 2008, pg.21)
The word palampore is an Anglicisation of palang-posh, the Indian word for bedcover. It also describes the principal use of these large chintz fabrics, which were made to be used on a bed or hung behind it. Initially made for domestic markets, such as the Golconda court, and for export to South-East Asia, chintz textiles were first exported to Europe in the early 1600s. The period from the early 17th century to the early 19th, witnessed a rapid rise in popularity for chintz textiles being exported from India, used first for home furnishings and later for fashionable dress. Although printed and painted cottons were being made in several centres in central and south-east India, those from the northern part of the Coromandel Coast have always been acknowledged as the finest. (Ibid., pp.8-10, 14-18)