Note 14 — TEXTILE FABRICS

In former times, linens and cottons painted, stencilled, or stamped with decorative patterns from an iron or boxwood matrix, were considered to be luxurious fabrics, and are denounced as such in the sumptuary pragmatic (quoted by Miquel y Badía) issued by Jayme the Conqueror in a.d. 1234: “Item statuimos quod nos nec aliquis subditus noster non portet vestes incisas, listatas, vel trepatas.”

Latterly, these kind of stuffs were made in great quantities at Barcelona, and exported to other Spanish provinces, as well as to America. “Several manufactures of printed linens are established here,” wrote Swinburne, in 1775, “but have not yet arrived at any great elegance of design or liveliness of colour.” The manuscript (dated about a.d. 1810) attached to my copy of Pigal's plates of Spanish costume, says that the pañoleta or fichu (neckerchief) of the women of Cartagena in their gala-dress was at that time of “mousseline blanche, quelquefois brodé, et três souvent n'est qu'un mouchoir d'indienne des fabriques de Barcelonne, avec une brodure en fleurs rouges, le fond blanc et parsemé de petits bouquets.” The same manuscript describes the dress of a cook at Granada:—“Le jupon (refajo), qui est toujours três court, est en hiver de laine avec une garniture au bas: en été il est en indienne. Cette indienne est une sorte de percale ou toile de coton peinte, dont il y a plusieurs fabriques en Catalogne. On en exportait autrefois une quantité, immense que l'on portait dans les Amériques Espagnoles; c'est ce qui lui a fait donner le nom d'indienne.”

From the same source we learn respecting another cotton fabric, which might easily be thought by the unwary reader of to-day to have been of Spanish manufacture, that “l'habitant de Mahon fait en été un grand usage de l'étoffe des Indes appelée nankin. Cette étoffe n'est connue dans plusieurs parties de l'Espagne que sous le nom de Mahon.”