Calico

a light cotton cloth of the class called print. It is chiefly used for women's and children's dresses and aprons. The name is from Calicut, a town in India, noted at one time for the manufacture of this kind of cloth. As distinguished from gingham, and other cloth dyed in the thread, calico is woven in white and is printed in desired colors on one side of the web. As distinguished from other grades of printed cotton, dimity, percale, and cretonne, calico is a coarse but light fabric. It is finished usually with starch which gives it a gloss and an appearance of firmness and "body."

The Dutch East India Company introduced calico into Europe. The art of making it gained a footing first in Holland. In 1676 calico printing became established on the Thames, near London; in 1738, at Glasgow, where it is still a staple manufacture; and at a later date at Birmingham. The first cotton mills were erected in the United States at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1790.

There are two classes of calico printers--those who weave their cloth and print it, selling their product directly to jobbers, and those who merely print the pattern at piece-price. There are two grades of calico, called 64 X 64 and 56 X 60. These figures indicate the number of threads to the inch. The first number in each set gives the number of threads in the warp, and the second number gives the number in the weft. The webs are inspected carefully for flaws, and are then stitched together in lengths of 300 yards ready for printing, which involves the various processes of singeing, bleaching, and shearing, besides the actual imprinting of patterns.

The variety of colors, tints, shades, and combinations is limited apparently only by the limits of human ingenuity. The preparation of the dyes or colored inks is a science. If a visitor were to go through any of the large cotton mills, he would come upon the chemist and his vats, and might learn much of madder styles, steam styles, indigo styles, turkey red styles, bronze styles, aniline colors, and of mordants, baths, acids, dyewoods, extracts, chromates, clays, pigments, and bleaches. The chemist in calico works needs to know not only how to make his dyes give the exact colors desired, but he must be a student of all possible coloring materials. He must know how to make his colors withstand washing, and what ingredients will give the desired color without injury to the cotton.

After printing, the cloth passes through certain finishing processes. It is starched, evened, and pressed. It is then folded into laps and is ready for market.

See Singeing; Shearing; Bleaching; Cotton; Printing