Before cotton goods can be printed it is necessary that the cloth shall be thoroughly well bleached, and that all nap shall be removed from the surface by singeing and shearing. Especially if good whites are desired, or printing is done with fine stipple rollers (rollers engraved with dots instead of fine lines), the cloth must also be straightened on stenters and weft straighteners before it is printed, in order to show the pattern in proper posi tion and register. Woollen goods are chlorinated before printing, for only comparatively mild steaming with moist steam is possible for this material. Silk is treated with stannous chloride or phos phate. Animal fibres take colours readily enough, after proper preparation, and not only wool, direct cotton, basic and mordant colours may be used, but also aniline black, nitroso blue and insoluble azo colours.
For complete directions for the printing of fabrics of both animal and vegetable origin, see E. Knecht and J. B. Fothergill, Principles and Practice of Textile Printing (2nd ed.). (E. HO Printing patterns on textiles, whether of flax, cotton or silk, by means of incised wooden blocks, is so closely related in its ornamental effects to other different methods of similar intention, such as by painting and by processes of dyeing and weaving, that it is almost impossible to determine from the picturesque indi cations afforded by ancient records and writings of pre-Christian, classical or even mediaeval times, how far, if at all, allusion is being made in them to this particular process. Hence its original invention must probably remain a matter of inference only.
Whilst the earlier history of stamping patterns by hand on to textiles in the East has still to be written, a serious attempt has been made to account for the existence of this decorative process in Europe during several centuries prior to the introduction of the "Indiennes" or printed and painted calicoes imported from the East. Specimens of printed stuffs have of recent years been obtained from disused cemeteries in Upper Egypt (Akhmim and elsewhere) and tell us of Egypto-Roman use of such things. Some few of them are now lodged in European museums. For indi cations that earlier Egyptians, Greeks and Romans were likely to have been acquainted with the process, one has to rely upon less certain evidence. Of textiles painted by Egyptians there are many actual examples. Apart from these there are wall paintings, e.g., those of Beni Hassan—about 2100 B.C.-in which are represented certain Asiatic people wearing costumes irregularly patterned with spots, stripes and zigzags, which may have been more readily stamped than embroidered or woven. A rather more complicated and orderly pattern well suited to stamping occurs in a painting about 1320 B C., of Hathor and King Meneptha I. Herodotus, referring to the garments of inhabitants of the Caucasus, says that representations of various animals were dyed into them so as to be irremovable by washing. Pliny describes "a very remark
able process employed in Egypt for the colouring of tissues. After pressing the material, which is white at first, they saturate it, not with colours, but with mordants that are calculated to absorb colour." When this was finished the cloth was "plunged into a cauldron of boiling dye" and "removed the next moment fully coloured." "It is a singular fact, too, that although the dye in the pan is of one uniform colour, the material when taken out of it is of various colours according to the nature of the mordants that have been respectively applied to it." Egypto-Roman bits of printed stuffs from Akhim exhibit the use, some 30o years later than the time of Pliny, of boldly cut blocks for stamping figure subjects and patterns on to textiles. Almost concurrent with their discovery was that of a fragment of printed cotton at Arles in the grave of St. Caesarius, who was bishop there about A.D. Equal in archaeological value are similar fragments found in an ancient tomb at Quedlinburg. These, however, are of com paratively simple patterns. Other later specimens establish the fact that more important pattern-printing on textiles had become a developed industry in parts of Europe towards the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century.
The Rhenish Monks.—According to Forrer (Die Kunst des Zeugdrucks, 1898) mediaeval Rhenish monasteries were the cradles of the artistic craft of ornamental stamp or block cutting. In rare monastic mss. earlier in date than the 13th century, initial letters (especially those that recurred frequently) were some times stamped from hand-cut blocks ; and German deeds of the 14th century bear names of block cutters and textile stampers as those of witnesses. Between the iith and 14th centuries there was apparently in Germany no such weaving of rich ornamental stuffs as that carried on in Spain and Italy, but her competitive and commercial instincts led her to adapt her art of stamping to the decoration of coarse textiles, and thus to produce rather rough imitations of patterns woven in the Saracenic, Byzantine and Italian silks and brocades. Amongst the more ancient relics of Rhenish printed textiles are some of thin silken stuff, impressed with rude and simplified versions of such patterns in gold and silver foil. Of these, and of a considerable number of later vari ously dyed stout linens with patterns printed in dark tones or in black, specimens have been collected from reliquaries, tombs and old churches. From these several bits of evidence Dr. Forrer pro pounds an opinion that the printing of patterns on textiles as carried on in several Rhenish towns preceded that of printing on paper. He proceeds to show that from after the 14th century in creasing luxury and prosperity promoted a freer use of woven and embroidered stuffs, in consequence of which textile printing fell into neglect, and only three centuries later it revived.