Bandana
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a handkerchief of silk or cotton, having a ground of red, blue, or purple, ornamented with a pattern in white. The bandana was fashionable a century ago. Silk bandanas of that period show great beauty of texture and design. In certain localities, bandanas are used as neckerchiefs, and as head wraps for women. For the latter purpose, they are knotted sometimes into turbans or caps. The word bandana is from a Hindu word signifying a method of dyeing, which consisted in a skillful tying of certain parts of the cloth, thus preventing those parts from being affected by the dye. The "bandana style" is a term used in the printing of textiles, and denotes the method used to dye and print bandanas. The handkerchiefs are first dyed a solid color. The pattern to be used is cut out of leaden plates. A smooth pile of handkerchiefs is laid between two of these plates and subjected to enormous pressure, sometimes exceeding 500 tons. While under pressure a "discharging" fluid is allowed to run over the top plate. The fluid is prevented by the pressure from reaching any part of the fabric except that between the open figures of the pattern cut in the plates. The color is thus "discharged" in the form of the pattern. If a pattern in colors is desired, the color is printed upon the white spaces after the process described above is completed. With proper conveniences four men can print 19,000 yards of bandanas in ten hours. See Printing ; Dyeing
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 account is almost entirely about manufacture: leaden plates, 500 tons of pressure, a discharge fluid eating the pattern out of a solid-dyed ground. That method is gone from commercial mills, replaced by screen and rotary printing, though the Indian tying technique the entry credits for the name ",aniani, from the Hindi for "to tie") survives as a living craft in Gujarat and Rajasthan. What has grown instead is meaning: the bandana became the cowboy's dust mask, the head-wrap of the 1943 "We Can Do It!" poster, a 1960s counterculture staple, a color-coded gang signal in late-century Los Angeles, and in 2020 an improvised face covering during the COVID-19 pandemic. The square of cloth is unchanged; almost everything around it is not.
Written for this edition, 2026.