Caraco
Category
Costume
Date
1775 - 1800
Materials
Cotton, line and metal
Order this imageCollection
Snowshill Wade Costume Collection, Gloucestershire
NT 1348752
Caption
Indian cotton textiles revolutionised European clothing in the 17th and 18th centuries. Decorative, easily laundered and inexpensive, cotton fabrics made fashionable consumption a possibility for the middle classes. They were popularly known as chintz, derived from the Hindi chint or chitta, meaning spotted or variegated. Indian textile-makers block printed and hand painted vibrant floral patterns using indigo and madder dyes onto woven cotton. Chintz was exported by British and Dutch merchants and quickly prompted European imitations. Unlike Britain and France, where imported and domestically printed cottons were prohibited, Dutch manufacturers were unregulated, and many printing workshops were established in and around Amsterdam during the mid-18th century. This striking front-opening jacket, known as a caraco, is likely to have been worn together with a full-length petticoat by a young girl in the Netherlands. It contrasts a red and blue block-printed Dutch cotton of floral and lace motifs (itself a fusion of European silk and Indian floral patterns) with a contrasting lining of white chintz decorated with flower sprays. Emma Slocombe
Summary
Jacket; Caraco - White cotton, printed with design of bunches of flowers in compartments with lace effect. Madder red and pencilled blue. Lined with cotton block printed with flowers and stems in blue and red with black lines. Sleeves lined with cotton of a woven check in green/pink/blue/brown/white. Square neck - high at back. Fitted bodice, running without waist seam to knee length skirt. Skirt in 4 flared sections, with inverted box pleats at side seams. Sleeves elbow length, shaped at elbow. Lining made up first and the outer jacket mounted. Pleated bands of self-fabric at elbow. 18 metal hooks and eyes on centre-front bodice opening. One long, one short cotton tape each side inside waist. Unaltered. Very similar to jacket SNO.TC.51, which has same check lining. Line drawing with inventory card. (female)
Marks and inscriptions
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Exhibition history
Cotton: Global Threads, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester , 2012
References
Antrobus and Slocombe 2025: Helen Antrobus and Emma Slocombe, 100 Things to Wear: Fashion from the collections of the National Trust, National Trust 2025, pp. 76-77.