CALICO, a species of plain cotton cloth, the know ledge of which is derived from the Indian manufacture, and the name front Calicut, the district in India where they are chiefly manufactured. The first attempts to manufacture calicoes in Britain, were made in Lanca shire, about the year 1772, and that manufacture is now prosecuted there to immense extent, chiefly for the use of the printers. Calico is merely plain or alternate wo ven cotton cloth, of an intermediate thickness between those dense fabrics which are used for sheeting, and the more flimsy texture which is distinguished by the gene ral appellation of muslin.
In the process of weaving, there is nothing curious to analyze ; for it is so very easy, as to be among the first essays which an apprentice is required to make, in order to acquire some knowledge of the first principles of the art which he may be afterwards called to exercise in the most difficult and complicated of its numerous branches. As an article of general consumption, however, calico is an object of immense consideration to those manufac turers and merchants who produce and circulate printed goons for general consumption. Of all the cloths which arc printed or stained by chemical and mechanical means, calicoes, from their cheapness, form by very far the larg est proportion. Ilence, if less objects of technical in vestigation, they arc infinitely more so of mercantile and economical speculation. It is, therefore, to this particu lar branch of wea% ing, that the attempts (for hitherto they can be called little more) to weave by the applica tion of mechanical power, have in almost every instance been directed : for what is technically termed shawl cloths, are merely calicoes of a different breadth and fineness.
The adaptation of yarn to the reed in the calico manu facture, may be very easily fixed; for, in general, there is but one universal standard, at least in Scotland. This is an 840 reed ; or, as it is generally termed, an eight and two porter. Hence, in the Scottish phraseology, the term calico is seldom used ; blank is more common, but this properly signifies the application of cotton woof to linen warp. Among. op Tative weavers, an aught and twa generally expresses the meaning without any addition. It
may appear singular that 840 intervals of a reed should become an almost universal standard, whilst 850 forme the exact division by hundreds, which is the usual mode of counting ; and its universal adoption forms a curious specimen of the means of economy fashionable at the time when it was adopted. The manufacture being then upon a much less extensive scale than it is now, and con ducted with much less attention to regular method, the reeds were often constructed by porters of 20 splits each and counted by them. But the regular manufacturers finding this practice (which subsisted chiefly among the customer weavers, as they were termed, who were employed to weave up home-spun yarn by industrious housewives) to be very inconvenient in extensive prac tice, and of little practical utility, abandoned it in toto, and contented themselves with dividing the hundred into two equal parts. Upon this division their scale of prices was regulated, rejecting all intermediate divisions. But as the manufacture of calico appeared likely to become extensive, and also to require the most scrupulous par simony, by deducting ten splits from the fifty which formed the half hundred, they virtually reduced tile price of weaving, while the difference neither violated their established usage, nor created discontent.
Cotton yarn, about No. 24 or 26 of the water or en gine twist, is generally used for the warp, and they re gulate the appearance of the cloth so as to appear either opener or denser in the fabric, by the fineness and quan tity of woof which they use. As they wish to give eve ry possible appearance of density to the fabric, the slack twined yarn spun by the common hand-jenny is used for this purpose.
In all the lighter kinds of cotton manufacture, in or der to smooth any projecting fibres of the woof, it is ge nerally woven in a wet state, which in some respects an swers the same end as the mucilage used for dressing the warps ; but in the calico, and most of the denser fa brics, it is woven perfectly dry, in order that it may appear as oozy as possible. (J. D.)