 Hi, I'm Rebecca Oles of TimeSmith Dressmaking. Welcome back to my channel. Today I have something very special for you. As part of the CoCoVid weekend event, bringing together customers from all over the world for an extravaganza of four days of non-stop costuming treats. I'm delighted to be joined today by Myrta of Atelier Nostalgia. She is an academic and historical costume with a special love of traditional Dutch costume. And her costume activities can be found under the name Atelier Nostalgia on most social media, so do go check that out. But today we're going to be talking about Chince. This is a special research interest of Myrta, so she's going to share a lot of what she has found out about its history and how it was worn and used in particularly the 18th century, but its history does go back further than that. So without further ado, I'm going to turn over to Myrta to talk about Chince. Hi Myrta, how are you? I'm very good. Thank you for having me, first of all. Yeah, I'm very happy to sort of join in the CoCoVid shenanigans and share a little of what I found out over the years about this lovely fabric, so I love talking about it, so thank you for having me. So I think something that's good to start with is like, what is Chince actually? Because a lot of people might have heard of it, have some idea in their head of what it is and what it looks like. So the definition that I want to use here really goes back to the origins. And if you go back, then Chince is a common fabric, which is either hand-painted or block-printed, with natural dyes using a combination of mordant and resin dye techniques. Over the years that that definition has sort of changed from its origins, which really were about how it was made, into more of what it looked like, which is this beautiful floral printed cotton, which is often the the image that we get when we look at it today. But of course, when we think about it, when the people who were making this fabric also in the past, they were not just making florals, they were making a lot of other things as well, it's just that what came to Europe and what got the name Chince at some point was mostly floral. But the name really goes back, like the definition I just used really goes back to how it was made. And that's such an integral part of the story that I figured I would start there. Yes, please. So the origins of Chince lie in India and they go back for centuries. India has been producing cotton for a very long time. And over the centuries, they developed techniques that were superior to almost anything else that was being made in the world when it comes to printed and painted cottons. So most of the chances that we see coming to Europe in the beginning of starting really in the 16th century, in the 17th, 18th century, getting popularity were hand painted with special types of pens. And some of them were block printed, but that's a bit rarer. And it's really this process that took a lot of craftsmanship and went through a lot of stages. So they started with very high quality cotton fabric, which was bleached. And then they started with the outlines, the stems, for instance, in the darker color, which is the darkest brown almost black, which you often see the lines of being made of. That was a mordant. And this is sort of a technical term of mordants are basically a chemical substance. Substance naturally, of course, but it has this chemical reaction with the fabric, which makes it more susceptible to taking dye. So what they would do is they wouldn't necessarily dye the fabric with the dyes that they were using, but they would paint the fabric with the mordant, and then put it in a bath with dye. And then everything that was painted before would actually take the color. And the reds and these dark browns were made in this way. So they would start with these dark brown in sort of an iron, which means you also gave some of its color. And then for the reds, they would paint it with different types of mordant for different shades of red. And then they would submerge it into a dye bath. It would come out. It would then need to be bleached because everything would be slightly yellowish. So it would need to be washed and bleached. And then the second step after you've done the reds would be the blues. And blue was often done with indigo. The thing with indigo is that it does actually directly present this very lovely color, but that means if you put it into a dye bath, everything turns blue. So that is where the resist dye comes in. And that means... Is that resist dye? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So everything that was not supposed to be blue would be covered in a sort of wax. Okay. And that's again a very specialized process because it needs to be very flexible because it would fold up the fabric and it would need to hold because otherwise if you got cracks you could have these little lines of blue. Which you do sometimes see in original fabrics. And I love seeing these little veins because it means that something went wrong in the process, sort of traced back to its roots. But then it would go into the indigo bath. It would... Everything that was not covered in wax would turn blue. It would be taken out again, treated again. And then finally it would be the yellows. So there are three main colors, the reds, the blues and the yellows. And the yellows were also used to make greens by painting over the yellows on top of the blues. Yellow was basically the only of the three which were applied directly. Just as we would think of putting pink on fabric. It was also the one that was least resistant to light and it would fade most. So in a lot of tints today, the yellow would have faded more than the reds and the blues. So sometimes something might look loose today while it was a more green, more green in the period. Of course, green was the most difficult to achieve because it needs two steps. So you need more colors. It's a more involved process. But green was definitely there. A lot of the leaves are green and there's still some tints which have very vibrant, even green grounds. So the background would be completely green. So it was definitely done. It was just as main color you see more red and blue. And then green was for mostly and most tints was more for the accents. But definitely also our perception probably is influenced a bit by the fact that the yellow has faded most. So some of the green might have disappeared over time. Maybe with some kind of chemical analysis, they could trace that back. But that would really be specialized work. So after all this dying, they had some specific treatments and bleaching which really meant that these fabrics kept color really, really well and that they were very, very vibrant. And that's also what the fabric was loved for so much. Some of these processes, I believe, they still don't fully understand how it works today, let alone when they were doing it. And these just build up over the centuries. And some tints you also find some gold and silver leaf, which I just wanted to mention because it's so special. And we don't see it that much in European tints because it was mostly reserved for the nobles in India itself. So tints was made in India, but it was, a lot of it was transported to all over the world. But most of the tints in Europe wouldn't have gold or silver on it, but there were some people sneaks in some pieces at some point, of course. And they move, they catch the light when you move and it's such a beautiful, beautiful thing. Wow. So this is sort of the background of how it's made. And the reason I wanted to use that definition is because we have this very clear picture of floral cotton. Think of gins. And that's the European perception of gins, because that was what was made for European market. But of course, it comes from India. And the people there would have named it after the process, rather than the motifs, because they made things for all over the world. They made things for different markets in different places. And they have been doing so for a long time before the European showed up. And not all of it was floral. There's also more abstract and umethical motifs that people were making. So I think that that definition does more right to sort of the history of it, rather than just the European view of what it is and what we imagine it to be. Yes, it seems it was a world fabric. And so we need a world view. Yeah, exactly. You get tints in different regions. So to go back to I think the 10th century in Egypt, I found prints, cotton prints, which were made in India. And by the time the Europeans showed up, like I said, Portuguese came in India first in the 16th century. They really found a market that already existed, a trade network that already existed. And what most traders were really looking for were spices. So they went to Indonesia mostly for spices. And that's the case for the Dutch, but I think sometimes also for the English and the Portuguese who were the most prominent traders in the 17th to 16th century. And they found that actually these Indonesians didn't really care that much for all their gold and their silver. They wanted these Indian fabrics, right? Because they knew about it and had been a part of their culture as well. And India was making things specifically for that market. The way Chins ended up in Europe is very much about almost accident. They bought it in India because they wanted the spices in Indonesia. Couldn't lose everything. Just brought home whatever they had left. And people loved it here. And slowly, in India, the workshops also started to work for what they call European taste in a way. European Chins in the way, what we see was really made for Europe. We see it as this exotic fabric, which it was, and people viewed it as such. But it was made for Europeans with Europeans in mind. And people would bring descriptions or pictures, paintings to India to show to these mostly the middlemen, because they're one middleman between the traders and the craftsmen often. And they say, well, can you make something like this? And then you, for instance, get in the early 18th centuries, you see these chimpses, which really resembled the bizarre silks of the time. Really? Wow. With these really big, stylized, floral, but almost weird type of patterns. Yes. Whereas later on, if you go on and time the chins also becomes less Baroque and more Rococo. Yes. That was not because the unions evolved their taste. So what it looks like is really this interesting mix of Indian craftsmanship and European ideas of exoticism mixed with their European taste. And that's what really brought these patterns to life. So the narrative of India, and it changes, of course, later in time. But of course, the trading agencies, they were there to trade, they were there for the money, but it also meant they wanted the monopoly. And then it became political, because to have a monopoly, you need power. So they weren't just the innocent traders there. But I also don't like to see these craftsmen as victims, especially at this stage in time, because they were very good at what they did and they were very savvy. And they had the trade secrets and no one else could imitate or come close to what they could make. It's an interesting point that it was a very valuable commodity that gave rise to eventually the kind of greed and exploitation. But at this point in time, these Indian craftsmen were not being exploited. If this was their thing. I mean, Europeans used existing political structures and they played them out against each other. So they weren't innocent in that sense. But I also don't, like I said, I don't like to paint them as victims at this stage, because they were very specialized in skilled craftsmanship and their product was valued enough. And of course, what it leads into is this global textile trade, which then the European powers say, hey, can we do this cheaper? Can we do this ourselves? And that leads to the confrontation. Yes, the slave trade. So it's it's directly related. But it's not an effect. Yes. So you can sort of see the beginnings, but it's not quite the same story yet. So I think if you think about the whole story about colonialism, about cotton, and about slavery, then chins feeds into that in certain different ways. It's not fully the same story. And yet, there's very clear relations and things that happen over time because other things have happened in the past, which means that there is a relationship there. So for the Dutch, the 17th century, so the century in which chins really started coming in, in which the East India Trading Company was founded. It was also the century in which the Netherlands became the Republic of the Netherlands, and itself became free of Spain. It's also the century in which the transatlantic slave trade started. And in the Netherlands, there were two separate companies. The East Indian Trading Company was there. They went to India while cotton got spices in Indonesia and came back. And the West Indian Company were the ones who went to the West because of Africa and traded the slaves to the locations they had in the Americas, mostly for sugar at that point, and then went back. The East Indian Trading Company was a lot more successful financially, but they were involved in both. But they were slightly separate. Now, I don't think it's right to say that that makes the East Indian Trade Company more morally superior to the West one because they didn't trade in slaves because trade was about monopoly and monopoly was about power. And this is sort of how the whole colonial story got started, right? In India itself, there were places where people were displaced and where wars were fought. Most wars were fought with the Portuguese who came there before. But it was also a lot of collaboration, cooperation with local power structures that were already in place, and then they would pay taxes and trade for that. They could get some trade of the monopoly. It wasn't always peaceful, but there were collaborations there. So the story of Chin's there is that those workers were already making for different markets. They just had an extra market they could produce for, and I think wealth wise, that was not a bad thing for the people who made these coffins. That's the story of the 17th century. In the 18th century, the heyday of the Dutch trading companies is really in the 17th century. In the 18th century, that gradually declines until they go bankrupt. The East Indian Trading Company goes bankrupt near the end of the century. I think the West Indian Trading Company goes bankrupt a couple of times. But the story of Covenant is also one that makes it, it popularizes it in the West, and that gives rise to industrial revolutions. People who started producing both the dies in the printing factories here in Europe, which are initially the cheap limitations. But also at some point, because of this rise in need for cotton, people start looking for other sources. At that point, the Dutch are not that involved anymore. The plantations that the Dutch have at that point are mostly in Suriname, and I believe those are mostly sugar. Again, for the morality of the story, it really doesn't matter whether it's cotton or sugar, there were still slaveholding plantations. But to link it to China, the Dutch were not that involved anymore. Of course, you do get the plantations in the Americas at some point. The want for cotton and the fact that this has become such a prevalent fabric, partly largely because of chins, they'd feed into how much cotton then was worth and was worn and was wanted and fed into that whole industry. So the story of chins, I wouldn't say is necessarily one of, it's not one of slavery and it's one that's adjacent to colonialism. But for the Dutch, again, not quite because they just had these small trading posts, but everything that happens there feeds into the larger history and leads to other things. And that's the link that I think is good to mention and be aware of. And the reason that the Dutch was such a rich republic in the 17th century was because of this trade. And a lot of people did suffer over that as well. So you can't fully separate that either. But it's a different century. And the story of chins really, in the way we've been talking about it really ends around 1800. And from what I know of the common story in the US, which to be honest, is I want to learn a lot more about that. I don't know that much about it. But that really started around the same time. In some ways, that printed cotton story that is so intrinsically linked to the history of slavery that that trade would not have developed the way it did if chins hadn't been so loved. No, yeah. So it's really about there's a timeline there, right? And things don't just prop up. They grow out of other things. And I think that's where chins ties in because it's the start of a lot of things. I want to highlight how skilled these people were, right? Yeah. And how how markets savvy they were. Yes. Because they were very, very good at making things for markets from all over the world so that they would local tastes would would like these these products that they made. And I think that's their their skill that shows through that, both as as craftsmen as as a businessman. Yeah. And and European production methods at some point took over but it took them years, centuries to get to the level that had been developed in India. Yes. So maybe we should talk a bit about chinsing or how it got there and what it's sort of the timeline is. So of course, from my perspective, I look at things mostly through Dutch perspective. So in that sense, that's that's European perspective for me that I feel that that makes sense because I am Dutch. I live in Netherlands and that's sort of the way I look at this fabric. I think everyone in the Netherlands who knows anything about chins knows it's Indian origins. Right. And yet it has strangely become also this very Dutch thing because it at some point took over a very prominent place in traditional costume and that traditional costume would not have looked the way it looked now without these global trade networks. So it started like like I mentioned before, it started sort of in the 16th century with the Portuguese who came to India mostly to the West Coast, I believe. And the first chins is sort of already appeared on the scene in the late 16th century. We tend to really think of it as this 18th century thing, but it has such a long history. And it's really sort of the late 17th century that the big sort of the cotton craze really starts Europe. This is sort of the heyday also of the Dutch is a senior trading company. Also of the English trading towards India. And this is when it starts to really, really catch on. And initially mostly in home decor things. Of course, from coming from a costume perspective, we always think of dress. But it was large wall cloths, for instance, or bedspreads that that you see in the beginning and you see descriptions of room completely decorated in chins, which there are some in doll houses that still exist. I don't know that many real life ones, but it must have been stunning. Yeah, the way that looked. And the interesting thing is that because it was so popular, a lot of countries were a little bit scared of their own fabric industries. So in England and in France, in particular, they had bands at some point on printed cotton. So you couldn't wear, trade, sell or make printed cotton. And they had slightly different rules. So for instance, I believe in England, you could print, I think it's called so this linen cotton mix. The more industrial, not quite so aesthetic. But I think this is one of the reasons also why did I just have a fairly prominent history of chins, of course, because they were the traders, but also because it was never banned. Of course, as soon as something becomes popular, an expensive luxury product becomes popular, what do you do? You try to make an imitation that's cheaper. That's exactly what happened here. People started printing factories all over though. And for a very long time, they existed simultaneously, but people were very good at seeing the quality of fabric in those days. It was so important that people bought it, but it was sort of the cheaper substitute. And I think even now, we can see the difference. You see the difference. Another reason which I think is good to mention that they tried to copy its money, but it's also time. If you send an order to India, it takes two years to get right back. These journeys were very long. The process of making it was long and the journey back was very long and tastes changed. So to be really, to be able to react to changing fashions, yeah. That was one of the other reasons that people wanted to produce more locally. So it was not just the money. It was also that aspect, which yeah, it took a long time to get to India by both from Europe. And it was a hazard, this journey. So yeah, you will put in an order and you'd have to wait two years for it to get back. Jim sort of started to become popular at the end of 17th century popularity just kept rising really. And between 1750 and 1770s, also the bands in France and England were lifted. And that's also why I think now when we think of chins in dress and in existing pieces, it's mostly that latter half of the 18th century. About 1750s to 1790s. That's really when it was at its height, in popularity and in how much people owned and how much it was worn. There was also sort of the time when the printing factories in Europe started to start achieving more high quality products. But again, this has been going on for 200 years at this point. And one thing that's good to notice that the European printer company was almost exclusively block printed. There wasn't really any hand painting being done. So even though you also had some block printing in India, it was mostly hand painting, whereas in Europe, it was more industrial. If you block print, you print everything the same in one go. So the more shade you want, the more production it entails. Whereas, for instance, with the more inside the reds, I do believe they could just add different layers or have it a little thicker and a little thinner. It's probably a little bit different with the Indigo. I don't know for sure, but because that was a dye bath, it would be more similar to having another round of printing. You do also get the more two tone or two color things from India. But I think it was also taste. So I know that a lot of the two tone fabrics, which we now see in the Netherlands, also sort of are known to have been made for specific markets. So for instance, for morning, people would, in a lot of places, would not wear red. So then it would need to be blues only. And then it could be made in India just on those requests. So I think probably price and the fact that production was more expensive if you wanted more color, more shades, quite a part in it. But I think it was also just taste. And this European taste that was also inspired by what people knew of the East, which was then influenced by China and by Pottery, which was blue and white. And that was so popular at the time that that probably also influenced to some extent what people's aesthetic tastes were. Yes, these things are all connected, aren't they? Yes. It's not a thing you can really only look at at isolation as a fabric. It's decorative arts. It's the material culture that society was surrounded by, not just what was on their bodies, but what was on their tables and on their walls, the aesthetic and what they wanted and what, you know, down to colors and yes. And nowadays, we see fabric so much as something that you wear, but like I said, the wall hangings and the bed hangings and of course, this predates wallpaper. So fabric is something you decorate your house with much more than than it is now as well. So those lines are a little bit blurrier. So do the tastes changed around 1800? That's of course something you see in the silhouette and because of their dresses, there's a drastic move from the old to the new. And the Chen's popularity didn't really survive that. So you see a lot of Chen's gowns in the early 19th century from all their fabrics because people, they keep reusing it and the fabric itself was very sturdy and pretty and kept well. So it would have been recut and reused, but for less fashionable things. And then there was really this shift also towards the white and sheer fabrics. And when that changed again, Chen's never really came back the way it did because the whole cotton industry had changed so tremendously. In the Netherlands, it never really went away. So our traditional regional costumes, you should almost call it, there were specific things that were worn in specific regions around towns or larger regions. And nowadays, we tend to think of folk costumes as this sort of national feeling of nationality, but it's really much more about region and community in those days. And in the 18th century, you already have some places that have specific types of headdress or slightly different ways of styling things. And those communities were also the slowest to pick up on this drastic new silhouette. So you get these pictures from 1800 in people in full hoops. And you think, is this misdated? But it's really not. It's just the Dutch Protestants, they don't really trust change or the French. So they're slow to change. But this appreciation for good fabric really stayed. And because people were less influenced by these fashion crazes, chins also stayed popular in a lot of ways, in different places, in small things. So people kept wearing these old petticoats for a long time, even though the trade to India wasn't really there anymore. So that declined and changed at some point. But this law for this fabric never really went away. And especially in the north, in Friesland, the town of Hindulopa is the one example that everyone knows of, because they had these long coats of chins. And it became almost this national symbol. And that costume actually disappeared in the 1880s, the last person wearing this daily died in the late 19th century. But there were a lot of folk groups which kept this costume alive. And I think that's also why when Dutch people see it, they think of Dutch traditional costume and they think of folk costume. So I think that's also why there's a lot of information available in Dutch about chins. True. Oh, yes. And incredible collections that are in museums. Because people valued it as this part of material culture. And because it had this sort of almost nationalistic, national pride type of feeling. And especially since it has its own language and its own culture, and it's very proud of that. Right. So as a badge of that identity, people kept it. Yes. And therefore it stayed popular, even though it was never as priced as a fabric as the most luxurious silk brocade was. Yes. There was also still stuff beyond that. But chins was treasured for also for that reason in the land. So we have a very large collection in different museums here in the islands in different places. Yes, I've seen just a few and it's just wet my appetite to see more. It's a, and I know there's a lot I haven't seen still. I've been to about every exhibition for the last four or five years when they've had something. Yes. But I know there's more. And there's a lot of local small museums as well. Yes. Which is very scattered. There are permanent collections in a much smaller scale. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So but you need to know where to look. Yes. Yeah. So we've talked a little bit about how it was used in decor. And of course we know from extants that it was used in clothing. But how, how was it worn? What sorts of garments and who was wearing it and what styles and, you know, let's as customers, let's get going with what we can do realistically and with some historical basis in our costuming today. Yeah. So I think we know very little about the chins that really came early. So before, you know, before the 1650s, we know very little about how it was used. But it's probably a bad point. It was mostly home decor type of things. Okay. So, so really the wall hangings and the bed threads, which you do see a lot in collections today. But as, of course, as customers, we're not as focused on sheets of fabric. I know. I don't think so. Would it have been decor, home decor that was driving all of that incredible levels of trade? Yeah. I think that's really how it started off. How it started. Okay. Because people had their way of dressing and that didn't suddenly drastically change with the dressing fabric. It trickles into the homes of the upper class. Because these were very expensive foreign goods. They didn't just appear on the market for everyone to buy, of course. So it's home decor in these stately big homes. And those were the people who would have seen it and come to know it. That in most places, that's the upper classes, like the upper echelons of society were also the ones that started wearing it as well. Okay. But of course, they were used to the silk rockets and chins never really got to that status point. It was very pretty. And because it was glazed at the time and it had this shine, it did have this sort of almost likeness to silk. But people were very good at identifying fabrics. Then no one would have mistaken it for a silk. So it started really in undress. Yeah. Okay. The things you wear in your home in the comfortable clothes. And of course, in the 18th century, that was a little bit different than we think of it now because nowadays you wouldn't receive your guests in your undress. And that was the thing then, right? So it started in these lounge garments. And that's something we still see a lot of today because immense clothing, it almost stayed there. It did move on a little bit, but in immense clothing, you see these dressing gowns, these in Dutch we call them Japanse walker. Yes. Really as a reference to the Japanese cut and style, it was very much inspired by the kimonos, but then the fabric was Indian. Yes. And it was this thing in England, this rash of fashionable people being, having their portraits painted in this undress style, but then their perception of what, of division between public life and private life was different from today. So that was, that was what they did. So, so Chince was in that world as well. Yeah, that's why it started with undress. As undress for the rich. Yeah. Because of course, full dress for the rich never really became Chince that much. It trickles up into it every now and then. Yeah. But for the very, for really, yeah, aristocracy, Chince was never as high quality as the highest quality silk they could get. Of course, of course. But then it sort of starts to trickle down as, as things are going to do. And it, mainly in women's garments, it really rises to full popularity and you see it basically everything. But the very, very riches would have probably worn it more as undress, whereas more middle class people would have worn the best stuff for, for, you know, going to church on Sunday and the poorest couldn't afford it. It was, it was cotton, but it was still a high quality expensive fabric in that sense. So you see it in quite a while in children's clothing. The first picture that I know of is a painting of a family in the late 17th century girl. So the parents are both wearing black, very, very dodging to do at the time, because black fabrics were expensive. But the girl is actually dressed in what really looks like printed cotton. Right. So that painting is one of the first depictions that we really have of Chince. Yeah. And you see also in in current collections that there's a lot of children's clothing in Chince, a lot of baby's clothing as well. A part of that might be that you can cut up stuff to make it smaller. So if you have a price fabric, then it's quite likely that at some point it will end up in, you know, a baby's outfit. Yes. Yes. And probably it trickles down from these upper classes to, to say more the servant class, which in a way, stylized was almost a bit in between the lower classes, because they would inherit clothing from that they served with. It became more popular in the lower classes as you go on. When you look at what exists now in terms of of Chince in museums and the different types of garments that have survived, looking at like what still exists and what do we have, because it shows a little bit about what type of garments Chince could be made of. Another good way is to look at inventory lists. So to look at what people, when people pass away, there are usually formal lists drawn up of all their property and all their goods to what would go to whom. And those lists we still have. Yes. And the nice thing of that is that we know they show a fairly complete picture. Now I'm not going to use always a bit difficult, because what do they call what? The story with extensive, of course, what was valuable as much as what existed. And that you get a little bit less within for realists. Looking at that, you see that indeed it's mostly women's wear. So for men, it's mostly it's the bunions, it's the dressing gowns, prominently. And then for the lower classes, you do see some garments, like waistcoats, for instance, made of Chince in the Netherlands specifically. I know that probably existed more also in the regions where Chince was more worn as a type of original type of costume, right? In women's dress, you see almost all types of garments made out of Chince. Outer garments, right? Because, you know, just the limbs, not obviously. You do see a lot more jackets and petticoats than gowns. Now with that comes the know that people in generally dutch costume, there were a lot of regions in which people mostly wore petticoats and jackets, much more than gowns anyway. And that was really this sort of stick to the old Protestant, we don't trust the French type of attitude. Wearing fancy gowns, that's not what we're going to do. No, but you do want to be dressed better than the person sitting next to you in church. This is very interesting. We don't want to be fancy Catholics as the French are, but we do want to be the best dressed in town. Right, yes. So there's this very subtle trying human nature. I love this story, this because it's so recognizable, right? Yes. But one of the things is that gowns were, I think in general, a bit less worn than in other places. But looking at X-Cents, you also do see less gowns. Then again, you have, there's a couple of sac gowns, which are made out of chins, which are beautiful. So the one that you are going to work on, I think, is one of the prettiest examples. And it's a bit of a mystery because that one, the provenance is apparently French. It's the only one I know of in the dutch style chins. I know of a few in what the British were doing to compete, the British competing floor costumes, there are lots of those. Yeah, so the red ground, that was really a thing that was known to be sort of a dutch thing, almost. And you see a lot more chins in dutch collections with different color grounds. You have the white grounds as well, but you see a lot more of the colors. There's some blue and some green, which is a bit rarer even than the red, but really, really beautiful. But I personally really love the red ground. But yeah, and what I also find interesting about your example is that it was, it's dated during the French bands, right? So even though there were bands on wearing this stuff, people were still doing it. In the Netherlands, I know of one sac gown that's in the next museum, that one that does have a white ground. And it's for a sac, it's simple. It has barely any decoration, it doesn't have very wide hoops. So I would say that it's 1780s. It could be, yeah, probably later. It's quite a very narrow pleats in the back, yes. And quite low in the front. It's very low in the front, but a lot of dutch jackets are very, very low. They wouldn't have been worn without anything underneath them. Absolutely. So I do wonder about that one, because it's the only one I know of that example, but you have a lot of jackets that are cut extremely low, but that's because people would wear a type of partlet under them always. Yes, and the English weren't wearing the partlets. They were wearing kerchiefs and other types of things, but the partlet carried on in the Netherlands. Yeah, so that's a very dutch thing, but people also wear kerchiefs. So you don't spot these partlets in paintings at all. You don't see them, but we have a lot of excellent ones. And you do get the fitted back gowns in chinses as well. There's a couple of beautiful examples in dutch plechchines as well. One of my favorites is the one with the red ground in the Rollerdam Museum. That's a very, it's the style and the cut in itself is very dutch, and the chins is very dutch, and it's a lovely example. But jackets really predominantly were made out of chins. And as we all know, the one in the Rijksmuseum that is pattern matched in that fan shape on the back is just one of the most glorious examples of fabric in chins. It's extraordinary. Yeah, and the interesting thing about that one is that it's actually in the local specific. Is it really? Yeah, it is. You can barely see that from the back, so that... No, no. But Hinaloppe has a town because they had these long, almost cold-like garments, without a waist seam. You have a short version of that, which is open in the front, but it just runs down and it has this sort of tape-like thing. So it's called a Cossacanche, which is probably from the French Cossacanche, but then the Dutch way. Yeah. And it's cut in the same way as the long... I always say, I... The long ones, except it's just cut short. I've seen it in person. And what I really, really loved is that there's this little bit at the bottom, which is completely not symmetrical at all. But because it's cut so well in other places, you don't even see that. But it sort of makes them, it makes them human. Human. Yeah, and of course in Hinaloppe it was worn in these jackets, but I always say people love that so much, but you need to see it in context. In context. I mean, you can always recreate whatever you want, of course. But if you think about how it was worn, this was worn with a very specific type of other garments, specific fabric type of apron, a specific type of headdress. And it really belongs together with all these other elements to make up this wonderful, colorful costume that we still love today. The thing also with Dutch culture is that there's no oppression there. So I think anything you see in Dutch traditional costume, and you love, feel free to be inspired by it, and especially the Wendtge. It is always... I think it's always nice if people... So the long code is called the Wendtge. Yeah, yeah. And the short one, Kasukkijn. But I think it's always good if you see something which really belongs to this very specific context to even look at pictures, because I know how hard it can be to find information that is not in Dutch, right? Or your frisian, which I can read, and I know in Hinaloppe they have their own dialect again. This is true. But to be aware of that, right? That will be enough to say, yeah, I've seen it. I know there's a lot more to it, and I'm inspired by what it is now. I want to see what I can do with that. I'd take over it. I'd love to see that. Yes, I know that a lot of times we get inspired by garments we see in museums, and we take that garment, that idea, and then import it into another impression. And then there's also the temptation sometimes when asking for advice for people to think, oh, that's a very Dutch thing. Well, yes, yes. And you have some people then saying you can't wear that unless you're doing a Dutch impression, or you've got Dutch ancestry, or some sort of backstory that adds context. And well, that's not necessarily true. It is... So it's an eye opener to appreciate that that jacket was part of an overall costume, an overall style of dress that was not just about the jacket. Yeah, I mean, it's... Hindenlobe is known for chins, but if you look at portraits also from the 19th century mostly, but even before, they wore silk brawpades as well. It's just... Sort of famous for this very distinctive style they had. And the thing is, I'm not from Friesland. I don't speak the language. I go and visit my uncles every once in a while, because they live close to Hindenlobe. So I've been there and I love the town, but it's also in that sense, yes, I'm Dutch, but what does it really mean to have that as your heritage? Also the costume groups that are from there, and that really still wear this dress on special occasions, if you're genuinely interested, that's what they love, right? Because they have this fashion for themselves. Yes, it is about sharing the love, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And sort of respecting that there's a context to it. And you don't necessarily need to completely take over that context. So we have we have ventured into the question, how do you wear this? How do you style it? And this, of course, raises the perennial question about mixing patterns. What sort of evidence do we have or not as to mixing different colors and motifs in different garments, wearing a loud and proud jacket with a petticoat that is of a completely different design? I mean, is there any foundation for that? Not that much. The thing is, a lot of people, they see these beautiful fabrics and somehow the Dutch have become sort of known for mixing different prints and different things. And I think absolutely there were different mixing motifs and different fabrics that nowadays we maybe wouldn't think of. So a chins jacket would be worn with, for instance, a silk brocade or a silk damask skirt. Damask was very popular. So the two toned motifs. And then with a checkered, actually also Indian cotton. Yes. So in that sense, you get a lot of mixing of colors and patterns. I've looked into how much actually people would wear one chins jacket with a different chins petticoat. And it's really hard to find solid evidence that that was done. People own both. But when you look at most pictures, it seems to be more likely that you would wear your chins jacket with, say, a silk damask. For example, a bit for a wool damask, which they also made, one of my older favorite fabrics. Or that if they wore a chins petticoat, they were most likely under petticoats, a lot of them. Because of course, if you lift your skirts a little bit, you see the edge and then you want that to be pretty. Yes. So to wear them together, I found one doll, which has a dark brown chins jacket and a lighter skirt. But with dolls, you never really know whether they're dressed exactly the same as they were in the days. Yes. And there's this series of pictures that everyone always shows us as the printing mixing, matching. And there are lovely images, but they're sort of watercolor sketch. So it's really, really difficult to say whether something is a silk brocade or whether something is a printed cotton. So I'm a little bit hesitant about it. At some point, I asked one of the curators of the large chins exhibition in the Fleece Museum a couple of years ago. She has written multiple books about chins. And in that exhibition, they had a lot of beautiful examples with a jacket and a petticoat in different chins. And I asked her, how likely do you think it is? And she said, well, it's really hard to know for sure. We know we have a lot of jackets. We know we have at least a fair number of petticoats, which were probably worn to be worn to be seen on top. But probably it wasn't that like, that common to always wear word together if they didn't match. So they wouldn't be considered a matching set? Yeah, they would wear very, very little matching sets of jackets. So they existed to know that, but also probably people could splurge on a jacket then and then maybe on a petticoat next. And a lot of petticoats were fabric was specifically printed for a petticoat because they had to be ordered. Yes, this is true. This is true. It's really hard to make a jacket out of it then. Yes. Well, like embroidered soap panels that were obviously embroidered to order for particular types of garments. So that would fall in certain places. And it's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting. There's a couple of vinyans which you can see that the pockets are spared out in chins, right? So that was not just done with embroidery, but it was done with puffins as well. Wow. So it's probably not as likely as we would sometimes like to believe, just because it's so much fun. Yes. But people did own all of it at the same time. Yes, they would have coexisted in the work. They wouldn't have looked at you weirdly if you showed up in church with a jacket and a petticoat matched. It's just more probable that you would then have chosen a damask. It's a little, little bit quieter. And that then allows your jacket to shine or the other way around. And then of course, aside from these main garments, you had a lot of more accessory type of garments. And those are very much often made in chins also because it's a good way to sort of really liven up something smaller. True. Yes, it's true. So there's a lot of sun hats that have beautiful linings. Yes. And they were... Especially the one in Pislans. Yeah, they had these very big, to the front going lace caps. Very much stiffen, but also with wires in it. So these sun hats have a very odd shape that makes sense only if you see... When you put them on, they go towards the front only. But they often have very beautiful chins linings, which we can sort of show through of course the lace of the cap. But also what we'd call powder cloaks in Dutch. These little undress capes almost. For instance, if you were powdering your hair and it could be washed, you wear that to protect your clothing. And they made those in chins. Yeah, okay. Yeah, as well. So there's a couple of those. There's actually in the Fis Museum, they have a combination of a jacket, almost empire style. So that was probably an older fabric that was re-cut to your style. A sun hat and a cape, all in the same fabric. And I don't think they necessarily came from the same collection. But this was apparently a popular fabric that was around and used for all of these different things. And some aprons even, although it's more probable that aprons were made of the checkered cotton than that you get a little strip of chins right here and there. So it's very diverse. So this feels quite boring now. So many options. So many options. Anyone with an interest in Dutch chins of the period. All sorts of different things. Yeah. Look for in images and Yeah, really look at images. And what I find really difficult is that the people who owned the most chins were also always the most rich. They also had the most clothing, but they weren't necessarily any portrayed in chins. Because for them it wasn't their most classy fabric. Of course. You need to look for chins in more of the unknown portraits. And that's, you know, the ones hanging in houses that don't have online collections or they're much harder to find. Oh, yes. There's one in the, I believe it's in the Schepa Museum in Snake. So it's in Friesland of a girl wearing a dark blue chins jacket. Just beautiful. And then there's also the sort of the time aspect to think that people reuse chins for quite a long while, but depending on what type of gown you're making, if you're making a more upper class gown, then you probably are more likely to want the type of chins and sort of a style that was more popular at the time. Whereas if you're making a jacket, you can be a bit more old-fashioned because it could have been reused or recut longer. And very, very generally speaking, even in the Netherlands, you see that the earlier you go to bigger motifs are. As it was with silks. Yeah. Yeah. I followed that trend and some of the printer curtains near the end are almost, they feel more European to us. That's a generalization, but it's sort of one thing you can keep in mind. So if you have this very, very big print and a very dainty print, then they'd be less likely to be worn together because they're not sort of fashionable at the same time. And then you might have them both at the same time. And one would be your good fashionable one. And one will be your sort of unfashionable, but I want to look some serviceable. Yeah, exactly. What about local tastes? Sorry, we've talked a bit about backgrounds, how the Dutch really seem to love the dark, some of the coloured grounds, the red grounds and the blue grounds and the odd, rare green ground. And what we tend to see with printed cottons, whether they were produced in India with the chins methods or not. And the British seem to have a lot more pale or white or unbleached. Is that something to do with the process or has that really come down to different fashions? Do you think? I think it really comes down to taste, because they were buying from the same people largely. So it was customer-driven demand. I think it was really that, yeah. And the Indians were very good at that, knowing what was popular. So I can't really explain where this pension for red comes from, because if you look at the 17th century Dutch fashionable dress, it's all black. It's all black. Maybe it's a counter-reaction. The Dutch all woke up one morning and said, we demand red. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe also, I don't know if it was more expensive, if it might have been. Maybe it might also be time-related, because the Dutch were getting used to chins already at the beginning of the 18th century. It was really big. Whereas for English, it sort of started only after also the style slightly changes from this Baroque to more Rococo type of ornamentation. That might also have something to do with it, that the Dutch were already more familiar with this red ground than sort of they sort of kept it being sort of the old fashioned, which at the end of the 18th century, the senior trading company was not what it had been. And the Dutch Republic, in that sense, was also politically and economically not nearly as strong as it had been a hundred years ago. They were becoming a little backwards in the sense that where the French and the English were much more looking towards the future. So that might have something to do with it as well, that the Dutch clung to old styles. Whereas for the English, it only really started, the big hype started a bit later because of the bands that were lifted only afterwards. But that's speculation. You taste what you're used to. And again, it's these nuances that we don't know how much influence these different aspects had. The 17th century, when I grew up, it was always called the Golden Age. For a very long time, it has that name in the mountains because it was, yeah, how to knew. So it's the age in which you get the classical painters Rembrandt, right, that despite you get the senior trading company, it's the age in which the Republic was founded. So the Netherlands officially became its own country. And it's really only now that people are starting to sort of change that name because it was also the age of the slave trade. Let's face it, it was good for a number of rich people. But both the economy. Yeah. Yeah. But not for everyone. But that age has a very strong resonance in sort of the public consciousness of the Netherlands as the age of, you know, when we actually mattered as a tiny country. So it could very well be that the 18th century empire. The British have this, yes, every modern country seems to look back with rose-colored glasses at these periods when they felt that they were the top of their game or something. Yeah. Yeah. And other things that sometimes sort of old clothing traditions sort of were translated to chins. And that's what you see with mourning, for instance. And in Hindelope, I think you can see that very clearly because it's this small town and sort of there's more chins that we still know of. You get this very, very dark almost, it's a brown-black ground with only white bearings. And that's really heavy mourning. Yes. Which was probably made specifically for that. And then the lighter blue-white is probably also specifically made. And then for weddings they had the white ground with the red. Red. Gorgeous. Yeah. Which take old blood and milk. Yes. It's a very, I love that thing. So visceral in a way. Yes. These markets had these demands for specific colors and certain color combinations. And the meaning that ties into that. And the meaning that people sort of ascribe to it. And in a lot of traditional costume, even today, blue and white is light mourning. Purple. And that still sort of resonates for me. It does. You get it in regular dress in the 19th century as well, of course, but that already existed in the 18th century in a large way. And chins was just adapted to fit that style. So that feeds into, I know one of the books that we were talking about that's in Dutch that is about how chins sort of changed Dutch life, but the Dutch took chins to their hearts, to their homes, to their bodies in a way that they've never, you've never really let go of. Where in other countries it definitely had its peak and then gave way to other fashions. And these were the Dutch have really adopted it and made it your own. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you see that in words as well. So we started with this terminology thing. And then I took it really back to how it was made. But just how the word chins is used in English is also just to mean a busy floral pattern. Yes. Whereas the Dutch translation is very close. It has the same roots. But chins just means this 18th century fabric. It's not used for any type of floral. It's only used for this type of cotton. Coming to the present, the town of Mensgroot and Spakenburg, the town where there are still a fairly large population of women still wear the traditional dress. And sort of the eye catching piece is really what came from this part that we talked about before, except it's now this wide. Exaggerated. Yeah. So it's very, very stiff and it sort of folds over. And it's just grown in size like fashion fads do. Because the fabrics were still priced, they actually went looking for original 18th century fabrics to turn into these, the couplup as they call it. And it's a bit of a mix story because it often meant cutting up all petticoats to make something new. And for now, us died here of cutting up an 18th century chins petticoat is slightly horrifying. And what helps me is that this is not a one time project. It's not even a one time art project. It's something that's extremely treasured in this society. They have a lot of these and most of them are made from more modern cultures and princes. And people in that town know who has the old 18th century one and who knows who has the pretty one lying in their closet only for special days. It's this highly priced thing that's so appreciated still. Yes. That almost makes up for it. They have gotten, I think over the last 10 years, they have kind of a bit more careful in cutting up all pieces. Or aware of the value that it has before they do that. The people in the museums are good to talk to because we have to remember that these are clothes. Yeah. They're not dressed up for tourists. Right. So they're clothes. And if you want to picture ask nicely, you pay if they say no, then they don't mind most of them. Yeah. Just don't take a snapshot of them while they're working on the street because they're really just wearing what they've literally worn all their life. So but the people in the museums are good to talk to about it if they have some English. And that's, it's the older generation who still wear it. The language, I definitely do see if it could be a barrier, but most of them, if you're genuinely interested, are quite happy to talk to people. And I think it's, it's a special thing that these old fabrics are still treasured there and worn. Oh, yeah. Which is such a rare thing. Yeah. And it will disappear in a couple of decades. Yeah. And a certain richness to life will be lost when it goes. Yeah. Yes. So it's very double sided because I can't blame anyone for changing out of something that's so regional, so specific. There's women who never dress otherwise. But if they go on holiday, they take dresses because quite frankly, they don't want to explain to everyone that they're not a part of a dancing group. Right. I'm a part of a dancing group and I've been a broad and traditional costume. So I know. Yes. You get the attention, but you will lose something when things become costume instead of clothing. For the modern 21st century, looking for chins, you and I both have our favorites, but let's toss some of them out there. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's good also to go back to this definition. Right. So definition. Can you still get fabrics that are made this way? Yes. To some extent in India, yes. They'll probably be block printed instead of hand painted, but they won't look like the European 19th century chances because they'll have completely different motives. But there are still craftsmen in India using natural eyes, using their assist and the modern based methods to make fabrics. For that you really need to be in India. And I don't know specific sources, but it does exist. But it doesn't look like what we as a circle question we're not looking for, which is something that looks like the thing. Now there's one artist. Her name is Renuka Reddy, if I'm pronouncing it right, but she's an Indian artist who specializes in hand painting fabrics in the 18th century European style using traditional methods. She's made some things for museums. I think you can commission her. I have no clue what she costs, but I wanted to mention her because she's the only one that I know of who really makes chins following the full spectrum of meanings. She would be the epitome. From mere mortals. Yeah, exactly. I wanted to start with there because the rest of our sources are all either American or European. In the Netherlands there's two main lines of fabric, which are really meant as reproductions for chins. The one which I believe is the one you're wearing right now is dutchfabrics.com. This is the other one. So dutch fabrics very specifically makes reproduction chinses. They do copper plate printing. They have a factory in the Netherlands and they glaze their fabrics. My sat-down is their fabric. So for me the original chins, the 18th century garments I have seen were all glazed. To some extent. Some of them to the point where you think is that the plastic layer covering it. It's shiny. They don't coat for their glazing. It's really a heat and pressure process, which is called colandering. Now I believe that in the period they might have used some sort of dry starch to further the effect. For me that's such an integral part to what chins looks like, which is really hard to see in photos. If you've only ever seen chins in pictures online there's no fault that you don't spot that because it's really really hard to see unless you're there in person. You move and you see the shift in light. But it's something that's very characteristic to me and that's why I love their reproductions because they're the only one that I know of that actually plays their fabric. Of fabrics, right, they're a very small large-based factory, but I think in production terms if you don't want to go see India for the hand-painted stuff, I think they're the closest you can get. The other line is quilting copies that are really specifically made with reproduction prints. The difference is that they're quilting copies. The weight and the hand is different. They're not glazed. They're a little looser in weave. Actually, there's an Indian artist who wrote an article for one of the books. It's right there in my bookshelf about how much it matters that you have a very, very high quality cotton because you need fine threads, but also very finely woven for it to not run. It's really a smooth, almost paper-like surface. So to get closer to that you want this really, really high quality fabric. The quilting cotton is a little bit more supple, usually, and a little bit thicker, I think. I've never hand it like physically touched the 18th century stuff, but yeah. This is the Dutch quilts. And then the dutchfabrik.nl I have both. They are a similar weight, but the glazed hand is different. I believe that the dutchfabrik range is more tightly woven. This is the dutch heritage range, which is readily available in the UK. They're both a pleasure to hand sew, absolutely, but their characteristics handling is very, very different. But this is incredibly soft, the quilting cotton. So that's with the glazing, you lose a bit of that soft touch. You do lose a bit of that softness. But then on the other hand, you get the drape and hang with the 18th century styles that do involve a lot of yardage, a lot of fabric. It doesn't hang limply. It really has a fantastic sort of structure in a way. Yeah, it just looks right. I think that for a jacket, you can get away more easily with the softer fabric, because more of it is close to your body anyway. Yes. And because it's all closed-spitted and worn over stage, you get that structure anyway. Yes. Whereas for a sack down, you need more of that structure in the weight folds. Oh, and to be fair, the dutchfabrik line, they also, they take home teeth, but they do make different versions in different colors than the original. So you could always ask them, like, which color combination was the original? And they know a lot about the fabric. So their color combinations are always plausible. Yes. But they're not always direct reproductions of color-wise of an existing fabric. So Williamsburg, I believe, carries also reproduction prints from what they have in their collection. Those are very much an Anglo interpretation. Yeah, so that there will be sort of reproductions of the cotton that were printed for that market, but not in the end. And many of them based on home decor fashions in colors that weren't typically worn for clothing but would have been used for home decor. And I think when it comes to easy access, Akia is still one of the things to name out, because they do base a lot of their fabric on 18th century prints. The difficulty is that some of them they change more than others. They never tell you which ones that is. You know, we can name what's out there now, but there's always a good community to sort of say, okay, which is more likely. It's really, really hard to judge whether something looks authentic. And it's really difficult to fit your finger on what exactly it is that makes something look authentic or not. So you often see indeed, there's too much green comment, which I get, because you don't often see a lot of different shades of green ranging from yellow to dark and everything in between. That's not something you see a lot of. But you do have green ground chint. So it's not like you don't have chint with a lot of green in it. Yeah, there are not nuances here that get lost. I think when trying to help people who are new to custom to this period is that you want to give them guidelines that they can rely on, but then go ahead and make decisions based on and know they're not being sort of led astray. But a lot of the nuances do get lost. And a lot of the context too, because sometimes teasing out what would be appropriate for what someone might have in mind involves asking a lot more questions that sometimes they haven't just made those decisions yet and they don't realize that it even matters. That it even matters, that it has an impact on their fabric choice. Yeah, so it's hard and fast, rules are dangerous, then it can be very helpful. And especially when talking about something as difficult to grasp as the style of patterns or designs. I think at the end of the day, for everyone who loves this fabric, first of all, do whatever makes you happy, whatever context, right? If you choose to have something that is a fabric that you love and you don't need it to be authentic for anyway, it's a go for it, right? That never matters. But I find that a lot of people do sort of want to know, like how likely would it have been? I always, in my own costuming, I don't need to always be authentic, but I would always like to know whether I'm choosing not to be so that I'm not un-authentic because I just didn't know better, but I'm choosing not to be. And it's always a valid choice. It's an informal choice. So for people who would like to know what patterns are really out there, I think honestly the only way to really get to that is to look at a lot of it and to fill your head with images of the things and look at the descriptions, because most museum collections will say whether it's European, common print or Indian, say origin Indian fabric, Europe, the dress, right? And look at these images and sort of look at the dates, see how they connect, realize that fabrics were reused for a long time. So style cut of a garment might not always completely correspond to, you know, when the fabric originated, but the museums will typically say that. So they will set a date on the fabric and set a date on the garment. Some do a more complete, more detailed job. The V&A, I think, so it's a very good example. And they have an extensive collection of chints and other printed cottons and they will say where it was made, down to what part of India was made. And then they may say this was for the Indonesian market or the English market or this was for the Dutch market. And then there will be an additional date for the making of the garment and then any further alterations or updates that have been made. You have lots of chronology to work with that gives you, I think, a much more complete knowledge of the life of this object that is sitting here in the year 2020 and get a feeling for the global journey that it has been. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that the Dutch Museum is pretty good. They have a good website, they have a good collection website and good search. Maybe we can try to get the Dutch name seats in the description so you know what to look for. Yes, I will have some. Because that helps because sometimes, especially Dutch museums, they use just the Dutch language tags and then it can be really difficult to search if you don't speak the language. This off-mode news aggregate website, which has a lot of collections from a lot of different museums. The information is sometimes quite minimal, but it gives you a starting point. Yeah. So Monomuse, I really like as a platform because it brings together collections. So at least you have one place to search for in foreign language instead of five. And their search function is actually worked very well too. Yeah. It's fairly intuitive. Yeah. And especially if you're looking for the fabric, then just knowing seats will get you a long way. And then often the collection pages will have the Dutch description and you can see what you can translate via Google. Brilliant. This has just been wide-ranging. The chins was a pretty ubiquitous fabric. It was in so many different layers of society or in so many different ways. And yet there is some rhyme and reason to the place and time and the style, which we're now sort of looking back, trying to pick out just the sources that we have. But I think it's such a beautiful type of style that people keep coming back to it. Yes. Right? Yes. So I hope everyone enjoyed hearing a little bit more of the background and the history to this fabric. And I think when we look at these beautiful gowns and these beautiful jackets and things, it really, for me, it really enriches the story of that garment to know where it came from and how complicated its background and its story is, but also how many people were involved and how many craftsmanship and skill was involved in all those different stages. So yeah, like I said, I love talking about it. So I hope everyone enjoyed hearing about it. This has been absolutely fantastic, Martha. Thank you so, so much. We will have lots of information and links for the reading and museum objects to look at all down in the description below. And we hope that this has been an interesting contribution to the COVID extravaganza. And I hope that everyone has enjoyed it. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Thank you. So it's a very, in that sense, a very complex history. And it's what I would like to know more about most is really the Indian instructors of the tradesmen and the craftsmen, because that's really hard to get information about. And there might be more available if you speak other languages. Calling chins a problematic fabric, I think, is a little bit too easy, a story, because chins itself, as a product, already existed. People already traded it. People already were aware of that. The problematic part of chins, you can trace back to the European trading companies, stride from monopoly and power. And in that process, fought wars against indigenous populations, but it's not the common printers themselves, necessarily. So does that make chins problematic? I would say not more so than general history is. But it's good to be aware of its role in history and things that came later. And the way it contributed to wealth in other places then from where it was made. Which from our modern perspective, we really value giving honor and credit and the money to the people where stuff actually originates. And that's not a concept which was around in the 17th century. And that very clearly fed into how people saw it and dealt with it then. Yes, and it's what's also interesting to me is that in some ways also it's now, if you look at current situations, it's sort of comeback. Whereas current companies let their things be made there because it's cheaper again than doing it on their own ground. So they found this expensive product in India, took it away from India because it was cheaper to produce in their own colonies elsewhere. And then at some point when they lost their colonies and their own economy had provided it, they brought it back to those places that may be made cheap. It's amazing. And that now if you want good quality cotton and if you want it to be printed well in and then you have the whole layer for historical costuming that if you want it in a heritage or reproduction sort of design, India is where you go. It has survived in me. I'd never fully, fully disappeared. And it wasn't being driven by European tastes. No, definitely not. And what has survived has survived really because of internal markets. But I think it's a testament to the resilience of the Indian craftsmen in the sense that it survived. And I think that's important in this whole story as well is to maintain the agency of the people trading with the Yisimil company to recognize that these companies have very problematic histories. And at the same time not have the narrative be one of all these poor indigenous people who couldn't help themselves or something like that because there were power structures in Asia as well, which were never controlled in any way, right? It wasn't a good example of that. Yeah. And I think these craftsmen also deserve that agency, to some extent, without saying that that sort of makes up for a trustee that's going to get it elsewhere. But yeah. It restores their dignity, I think. Yeah. In people's perception, they hadn't actually lost it. But our understanding is no. Yeah. And I think, and like I said before, I think this concept that we have now of respecting the artist and respecting craftsmanship is something that really, I think that's a mindset that really started in the late 19th century more than it existed then because you didn't have factories, so everything was craftsmanship. And the whole art and craft movement grew out of this desire to go back to the respect of the craftsmen. It was being in a position to realize what you've lost in contrast. Now we have all this mechanized production. And then look, oh my goodness, the artisanal way has some advantages that we prefer. Yeah. So, but from that light, it also, it doesn't, it makes sense that in, I think, something in the 19th century, there wasn't this attention for the craftsmanship. It was really more about the traders who got the credit. And that makes sense within the perspective of how full of their craftsmanship within different ages. And then we can say, well, now we look at that differently. And now we want to tell the story all of the people who actually made this fabric and highlight that and bring that forth more. So then the value really lies just in the finished product as a commodity, as a trading commodity. As goods, yeah. But not a value on the actual expertise in the art, the artistic. I don't think so, no. So there were, there were some chances that were signed by studios, but they're quite rare. You see more ginses, especially in the Netherlands, which is the East India Trading Company, the logo, like the Dutch, they will say, stamp, because they sample all the things they imported about their stamp. And also, if you look at how people in Europe talked about these goods, they were called Persian, Indian, Japanese and Chinese, all mixed up. People had no clue. All right. And you do see references just to East India, trade at East India Company, East India Company goods. And they didn't make them, but any marks and, you know, in any accreditation tracking source had to do with tax. So it was, again, it was all about the money. It's very much a search for wealth. And that's what drives it. And we're now changing the story from one that says that the people who produce the most wealth are, you know, the people we should look up to towards a slightly better, I would say, perspective, but that looks at how they treat different people from different places and cultures. I hope so. I think a more connected world where there's a little bit more transparency, or it's harder for countries that have impact on other countries, harder for them to hide what they're doing. And there's more awareness, or if not actual scrutiny, that, yeah, there is more. Yes, it's still, you know, close from Dutch or Western clothing companies. I mean, it's the clothing companies that get the credit, not the garment workers, right? So it's something that's very, seems to be very hard to give rid of somehow. Yeah, that's something that needs to be explored as well is the state of the fashion industry now, how much has changed in any meaningful way in terms of who's doing the work, who's getting paid for it, how much, the conditions and the exploitation. Of course, that's a whole other story, but I do think it's, it's interesting how by studying historical textiles and sort of looking at how we view these processes with our modern eye, how much insight that can actually give us in what we're doing at the same time nowadays. You control the parallels there. Yes, it's an opportunity to have a look at what our fashion consumption and buying habits are and what ethical or otherwise sources, supply chains, and all of that is things to think about.