Chintz: A Brief History

Jul 07, 2023

By Anna Elise Anderson

You’ve probably encountered the multicolored, lively cotton fabrics known as chintz at some point, and your response likely veered toward one of two very different feelings. The eye-catching East Asian textiles, which originated in India and were prized by Europe's elite classes for centuries, continue to mesmerize and polarize the world today with their intense, floral designs.

For some, the term chintz conjures images of overtly feminine, grandmillennial interiors—explosions of busily patterned floral fabric overtaking bed covers, curtains, and walls. For others, chintz suggests a sophisticated, old-world nod to the intricacies of British living—a symbol of classic English country homes. But what, exactly, is chintz? There's more to the celebrated fabric than meets the eye.

Chintz is a cotton textile that emerged from India in the 16th century, featuring colorful, woodblock-printed, painted, glazed, or stained designs, typically on a pale or plain white cotton background. Celebrated for its vibrancy, intricacy, and resilience, traditional Indian chintz was used to make palampores—light, airy cotton bed coverings—tent panels, and other items featuring botanical or pastoral imagery (including still popular design motifs like the ubiquitous Tree of Life).

A Swedish-style bedroom in a Florida home decorated by John Stefanidis features a circa-1900 French tub chair and a fanciful chintz bed canopy.

"Chintz, as we know it today, is a continuation of a story that began in the 17th century, when printed Indian textiles were first introduced to the West by Dutch and Portuguese traders," says Sumitra Mattai, vice president of Kravet and design director for Lee Jofa and Brunschwig & Fils. "Broadly defined, chintz refers to a floral print that has been finished to give the surface of the fabric a polished sheen, often used for home furnishings. Chintz fabrics make fabulous drapery or upholstery, especially [on] accent furniture."

"It's a refined and elegant fabric, typically characterized by its smooth, glazed finish and intricate, often floral patterns," says Jo Littlefair, cofounder and director of London interior design studio Goddard Littlefair. (Glazing refers to a polished sheen made either by pressing cotton through rollers or applying resin to create luster.) "It adds a touch of sophistication and classic charm to any space," Littlefair adds.

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"Chintz designs evoke a cheerful mood. They offer a freshness and charm, especially when printed on a clean, ivory ground," Mattai says. Typically botanical or floral in theme, chintz can be identified by its multicolored, repeating patterns, which incorporate leaves, plants, flowers, trees, gardens, or animals set against a plain background. The sturdy, often shiny material is also notable for its stain-resistance compared to other fabrics of similar strength.

Originally, the term chintz referred to the complex, colored patterns printed on the treated cotton fabric, many of which were carefully (tediously) created by hand in one of two ways: using wooden blocks like stamps or via the natural, albeit complicated, 23-step dying process called kalamkari. Though many think it's the pattern or sheen that determines whether a fabric is chintz, that's not exactly the case. Chintz doesn't necessarily have to be glazed, though many chintzes are. What makes a cotton fabric "chintz" is the fact that the cotton has been treated with mordants and resists—substances designed to help natural dyes adhere to the cotton.

Chintz comes from the Hindi word chint, which means "speckled," "variegated," "spotted," or "sprayed." Though the term originally referred only to printed cotton fabrics treated in a particular way, it later expanded to represent a broader range. Now, most English speakers use the term chintz to describe cloth, upholstery, wallpapers, and garments featuring intricate floral patterns and heavy glazing.

Though sometimes used interchangeably to describe colorful cotton fabrics, chintz and calico are not synonyms. Calico originally referred to the cotton cloth bought and sold in Calicut, a port city on India's Coromandel Coast. In the 1600s, Indian artisans began trading elaborately printed, painted, and glazed calicos featuring flowers, birds, and other natural motifs. These more decadent, decorative calico textiles eventually became known in English as chintz. In other words, chintz is a type of printed calico (but not all chintz is made from calico). These days, the term calico refers to a specific type of unglazed, coarse, plain-woven white fabric made from unbleached, half-processed cotton fibers (much like what we call muslin in the US).

Curtains of a vintage Mario Buatta chintz found on eBay dress up Ariel Ashe's laundry room.

Though not a new trend (even a few of the historic rooms at Mt. Vernon contain floral chintz wallpaper and bedskirts), chintz remains a celebrated and interesting decor choice, as designers are still finding new ways to manipulate and incorporate it into interiors. Notably, the late, great AD100 interior decorator Mario Buatta used chintz as a signature element of his unique take on English country elegance. (His favorite chintz pattern was Lee Jofa's Floral Bouquet, of which he had a suit made for parties.) Credited with bringing the English country house style to the US, the New York designer was hailed for decades as The Prince of Chintz. His love of bold, cheerful florals drew inspiration from the unabashedly elaborate English Regency period as well as his chintz-loving predecessors, including Rose Cumming, John Fowler and Nancy Lancaster, and Sister Parish.

Before Buatta, chintz was a signature feature of another prominent and eclectic American designer: Born Dorothy May Kinnicutt, the designer known as Sister Parish earned worldwide renown for her comfy meets opulent interiors, blending timeworn, hand-me-down vibes with a certain English, old-school refinement. (Her accolades include a 1960s redesign of several rooms in the White House—a commission from then first lady Jackie Kennedy.) Influenced heavily by the classic English country house and the work of Brits like Sibyl Colefax, as well as the aforementioned John Fowler and most notably Nancy Lancaster, Parish created rooms that overflowed with charm, whimsy, and intelligent contrasts. "She was at once very vintage and forever fashionable—nostalgia was far from the only note being struck here," writer Steven M.L. Aronson noted in a 1999 Architectural Digest feature on her legacy.

"[Chintz is] well known as the most English of traditional fabrics, used in so many classic English rooms on walls, curtains, upholstery, or all three, and in the many hundreds of thousands of extraordinary rooms around the world, from America to Australia, inspired by those originals. But it can belong in a contemporary context too," says architectural and interior designer Ben Pentreath, author of English Decoration, English Houses and the forthcoming volume An English Vision (2024).

Mario Buatta, a.k.a. The Prince of Chintz

"While chintz evokes a sense of nostalgia, warmth, and old-world luxury for our clients, my first thought is humor: There's a cheeky element when discussing the infinite possibilities for using chintz in contemporary schemes. It brings an air of refined elegance along with a healthy dose of personality," Littlefair says.

The history of chintz and its ongoing appeal is a complicated story spanning multiple continents: a long struggle for power fought over centuries of agriculture, colonization, importation, and exportation. Chintz's history is also closely intertwined with the complex and sordid history of cotton production—an industry which, for centuries, depended on forced, unpaid, and brutal slave labor.

"In the England of Shakespeare's time, Europeans knew little about cotton and were clothed in linen and wool, as they had been since the Bronze Age," writes artist and author Sofi Thanhauser in her book Worn: A People's History of Clothing, a "panoramic social history" of five vital textiles: linen, cotton, silk, synthetics, and wool. According to Thanhauser, cotton emerged as a textile fiber simultaneously in India and Peru around 3000 BC, and, until the 19th century, intercontinental trade in cotton cloth was dominated by Indian weavers. Indian cotton began taking over Europe around 1600 with the establishment of the British East India Company; 50 years later, cotton cloth represented 75% of the company's total exports.

"Traditional Indian chintz was hand-printed on locally woven cotton using mordant and resist-dyeing techniques to create rich hues that dazzled the Western market. These artisanal pieces were used as bed hangings and drapes, and later, fashioned into garments," Mattai says. Over thousands of years, Indian artisans had developed complex chemical techniques to help fix vivid dyes to cotton fabric; traders exported their uniquely artful fabrics since at least the Middle Ages. But it wasn't until Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama visited India in 1498 that Indian fabrics truly entered the European picture—and went on to cause quite a stir.

Chintz, seen here on a custom bed by Mele, has a history dating back hundreds of years.

Traders from the Netherlands and Portugal brought swaths of chintz back to Europe from India, spreading more and more interest in the goods with each voyage. By the late 17th century, the popularity of chintz in Europe started to intimidate local textile industries, leading to a series of European efforts to profit from the growing market for it. "To meet the significant worldwide demand, the British East India Company increasingly colonized India's textile-producing centers, while mechanization and more efficient cotton spinning, weaving, and printing techniques contributed to the Industrial Revolution," writes Josh Basseches, director and CEO of the Royal Ontario Museum, in his foreword to Sarah Fee's beautifully illustrated tome Cloth That Changed the World: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz. Along with a 2020 exhibition of the same name at the Royal Ontario Museum (also curated by Fee and covered by Madeleine Luckel for AD), Cloth That Changed the World showcases example after example of the ornately painted, printed, and dyed cotton textiles that have been prized for centuries, telling a complicated story of art, ingenuity, geography, and political power. (For even more background, it's worth also reviewing The Origins of Chintz, ROM's 1970s exhibit on the subject.)

In the mid-1600s, Europeans began using chintz to make clothing in addition to decor items. As the East India Company continued to import chintz to Europe throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, demand for the fabric skyrocketed. "The craze for chintz was so intense among the European aristocracy that France and England both banned its import in an attempt to protect their own textile mills," Mattai says.

By 1680, chintz had become so popular it was considered a threat to both the French and English textile industries, who were not yet able to produce it themselves. From 1686 to 1759 in France, citizens were banned from producing, importing, or even wearing chintz. The Parliament of Great Britain enacted a similar law soon after, forbidding the use and wearing of imported chintz as well as the use of chintz in household upholstery from 1700 to 1774. (There were, however, several significant loopholes in the seemingly strict legislation: Fashionable ladies at the Court of Versailles continued to wear chintz, for example, as their social status was considered beyond the law.)

With the manufacturing innovations of the Industrial Revolution, Westerners were finally able to reproduce fabrics in the style of Indian chintz by the mid-19th century, which led to an inundation of cheap, poorly constructed, and badly printed imitations—ones that tainted the original fabric's legacy. Despite chintz's fall from grace, the Victorians, as one Guardian writer put it, were "obsessed with the stuff."

Soane Britain's Dianthus chintz envelops a nursery at the home of Aaron Young and Laure Heriard Dubreuil. The space was designed by Stéphane Parmentier.

Like any design element, success depends on how you use it. In the wrong hands, chintz can date a room, evoking the excesses of 1980s fashion and decor trends. (In fact, use of the term "chintzy" to describe overwrought, tacky, or too-busy floral patterns actually dates back to an 1851 letter novelist George Eliot wrote to her sister, though she was most likely describing the poorly made chintz knockoffs flooding European markets at the time.)

Chintz retreated from the spotlight of Western interior decor at the end of the 19th century, then began resurfacing in the 1940s, ’60s, ’80s, and ’90s. (Both Princess Diana and Nancy Reagan loved chintz, turning the world on to the whimsical patterns of Laura Ashley and others.) Now, bolstered by the current decade's botanical craze, ’90s fashion revival, and trending cottagecore obsession (as well as countless Instagram images promoting a kind of idiosyncratic, overly patterned vintage look known as grandmillennial design), chintz is coming back yet again—in both big and little ways.

"This style of material has been classified as dated for many years, with expressions like ‘chuck out the chintz’ becoming a common euphemism for ousting dated interiors and cathartically removing clutter from our environments," Littlefair says, referring to a 1990s Ikea ad campaign that helped usher in a new wave of urban minimalism in Europe. "The stiff nature of the fabric and the durability of the sheen also create limiting properties. However, where there is a limit, there's also an opportunity waiting to be discovered."

"It's become more popular as interests in traditional fabric, upholstery, and curtain-making rise exponentially. The ’80s are back in so many ways…. I’m sure, in another decade, everyone will be tearing out their chintz curtains and putting up gray nothing all over again. It's the circle of fashion," Pentreath says.

"Lee Jofa has always sold chintz, regardless of trends," Mattai says. "There are certain designers for which chintz will always be relevant." New methods for making chintz are evolving alongside modern technology, she explains, adding that "in recent years, we’ve been able to capture the look of chintz through screen and digital printing in both fabrics and wall coverings."

Modern designers are once again incorporating chintz into their work, either paying homage to traditional chintz uses or playing with patterns in new and unexpected ways. Over the past few decades, major fashion brands like Alexander McQueen, Betsey Johnson, Cath Kidston, and Zimmermann have incorporated various floral chintzes into their runway collections, and today's top interior designers offer broad ranging, often contradictory insights on how best to incorporate chintz in home decor.

"The chintz rooms of the 1980s were full-on, immersive floral experiences, often matching the same print on the walls, the drapery, and the upholstery," Mattai says. "These days, chintzes are used in increasingly eclectic fashion. They’re layered with ikats, cut velvets, and textures for a more updated, traditional room or used more as an accent, rather than the focus of a room. And young designers aren't copying the past; they’re mixing in unexpected elements, giving chintz new life."

Pentreath suggests finishing "a beautifully designed, contemporary sofa with a collection of floppy, comfortable, chintz cushions," inspired by a recent reno he did for a contemporary apartment, opting for a bold, allover chintz pattern (Jean Monro's Rose & Fern) for the bedroom. His go-to chintzes are Bailey Rose by Cowtan & Tout and Camilla and Bowness by Jean Monro—all of which appear in his own home.

With the increasingly apparent popularity of once-scorned chintzes, Littlefair sees evidence of recent sociopolitical trends—toward more color, more inclusion, more variety, and more voices in the mix: "Until recently, chintz has very much been ousted from our libraries and shunned from our mood boards. But now we’re experiencing a real thirst for innovative patterns and inclusion of color…. I think there's something very joyful in that! People are looking to surround themselves with uplifting fabrics and environments. Chintz reminds us of far-off lands and connects us with nature—two completely escapist emotions that are equally compelling."