Instruction manual for making dyes and sample of prints

Date: 1807

Archive: Municipal Archive of Barcelona

Document type: Textual

Reference code: CAT-AHCB-AHCB4-236-A068

Link to the online document

Description: The production of india turned 18th century Barcelona into one of the main manufacturing cities in Europe. In the first decades of the 18th century, Barcelona acted as a redistribution center for fabrics brought from the east to the rest of Catalonia and the peninsula, but around 1736 the first Indian factories began to appear in the city. By the end of the century, the manufacture of india had reached exceptional dimensions for Europe at the time, with eighty factories in the city alone and a hundred throughout Catalonia. Raw linen was imported from northern Europe and finished fabrics were exported to the American colonies.
This manual contains instructions and rules for making dyes, both for fabrics and for wood, and for making indianas. It includes, among others, a list of names of new minerals used to formulate dyes and their equivalents (back cover); a sample of prints (f.12 and ss); the drawings of instruments to distill products to treat fabrics (f.27r); a notebook of the colors used in the Santaló Indian fabric factory, located at Carrer de les Tàpies 8 (f.29r); and a list of colors taken from a French book called “Theoretical and practical course on the art of dyeing wool, silk, thread and cotton, factory of Indian fabrics in large and small dye” (f.46r).

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