Chintz

Categorized as Terms

(Cotton Cloth, Hand-Painted or Printed with Dyes)

Sylvia Houghteling

Related Terms:

  • Ikat (resist-dyed cloth)
  • Khayma (tent)
  • Loom (an instrument for weaving)
  • Silk (natural fiber made from silkworm cocoons)
  • Suzani (embroidered textiles from Central Asia)
  • Tiraz (calligraphic band on textile)

Related Khamseen Videos:

Sam Bowker, “The Egyptian Tentmakers and the Art of Khayamiya,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 28 August 2020.

Sumru Belger Krody, “Prayer Carpets,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 11 May 2021.

Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, “Craft and Aesthetics in Byzantine and Early Islamic Textiles,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 19 October 2020.

Selected References:

Barnes, Ruth. Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt: The Newberry Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. New York: Clarendon Press, 1997. Barnes, Ruth. Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt: The Newberry Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. New York: Clarendon Press, 1997.

Crill, Rosemary, ed. The Fabric of India. London: V&A Publishing, 2015. Crill, Rosemary, ed. The Fabric of India. London: V&A Publishing, 2015.

Fee, Sarah, ed. Cloth That Changed the World: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz. Toronto: The Royal Ontario Museum; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Fee, Sarah, ed. The Cloth That Changed the World: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz. Toronto: The Royal Ontario Museum and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019.

Floor, Willem. The Persian Textile Industry in Historical Perspective, 1500–1925. Paris: Harmattan, 1999. Floor, Willem. The Persian Textile Industry: In Historical Perspective, 1500–1925. Paris: Société d’histoire de l’Orient, 1999.

Houghteling, Sylvia. The Art of Cloth in Mughal India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022. Houghteling, Sylvia. The Art of Cloth in Mughal India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022.

Irwin, John, and Katharine Brett. Origins of Chintz: with a Catalogue of Indo-European Cotton-Paintings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. London: H.M.S.O., 1970. Irwin, John, and Katharine Brett. Origins of Chintz: with a Catalogue of Indo-European Cotton-Paintings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. London: H.M.S.O., 1970.

Lemire, Beverly. “Domesticating the Exotic: Floral Culture and the East India Calico Trade with England, c. 1600–1800,” Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture 1/1 (2003): 64–85. Lemire, Beverly. “Domesticating the Exotic: Floral Culture and the East India Calico Trade with England, c. 1600–1800,” Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture 1/1 (2003): 64–85.

Citation:

Sylvia Houghteling, “Chintz,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 2 December 2025.

Sylvia Houghteling headshot.

Sylvia Houghteling is Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, USA. She specializes in early modern visual and material culture with a focus on the history of textiles, South Asian art and architecture, and the material legacies and ruptures of European colonialism. Houghteling’s research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is the author of The Art of Cloth in Mughal India (Princeton University Press, 2022), which received the College Art Association’s 2023 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award, the Textile Society of America’s 2024 R.L. Shep Book Award, and the 2024 Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. Houghteling’s ongoing research looks at textiles and temporality and the unique material histories of the eastern Indian Ocean trade.