Book reveals how Chintz—India’s precious textile pattern—became a precolonial global export
A new book titled *Chintz: Indian Cotton Textiles from the Karun Thakar Collection* explores the history of chintz, a block-printed Indian textile pattern that was traded globally for over a thousand years before European colonialism. Based on one of the world's largest textile collections, the volume features essays by 12 scholars and traces how these intricately designed cloths traveled to Japan, Indonesia, France, and Britain, influencing local fashions and sparking cross-cultural exchange. The book highlights the challenges of studying textiles from oral societies, where makers remain unnamed and many pieces have not survived.
