Fashionable Chemistry: The History of Printing Cotton in France in the Second Half of the Eighteenth and First Decades of the Nineteenth Century
In the seventeenth century, when brilliantly coloured Indian painted and printed cotton textiles reached Europe they became very popular. Due to the large volume of imported textiles, local wool and silk producers became concerned and they petitioned for strict regulations. In France, legislation was introduced that banned import and local production of printed cotton textiles from 1688 to 1759. This thesis looks at how the knowledge of printing cotton in the Indian manner reached Europe and how it was implemented by the French textile industry, especially at Jean-Michel Haussmann’s establishment in Logelbach outside Colmar in Alsace and Christophe-Philippe Oberkamf’s establishment in Jouy-en-Josas outside Versailles. In the eighteenth century France did not have a textile printers’ guild to restrain the introduction of the Indian method or stop the impact from contemporary scientists whose research was adapted and used to benefit the industry. I investigate the co-operation between craftsmen and scientists by studying published scientific papers and dye books that focused on new innovations and improvement aimed at benefitting this industry. To verify that the new methods and scientific ideas were really implemented it is important to look at the textiles themselves. Using examples from the Royal Ontario Museum’s Collection and comparing them to written information in Gottlieb Widmer’s manuscript and the chemist Claude-Louis Berthollet’s dye books, we can evaluate the development of textile printing at Oberkamp’s establishment. The printed textile Les Travaux de la manufacture (The activities at the factory) which illustrates textile printing at Oberkampf’s factory in 1783-1784, can also increase our knowledge of the printing process. Printing textiles is really a form of applied chemistry and in the second half of the eighteenth and the first decades of the nineteenth century, French scientists and craftsmen co-operated and worked closely together to the benefit of this very lucrative industry.
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