Asian silk in eighteenth century Scandinavia – quantities, colour schemes and impact
by Hanna Hodacs, University of Warwick
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The paper I am presenting here is based on results from a project Trading Eurasia. Europe’s Asian Centuries 1600 to 18230. The project, initiated by Maxine Berg, focuses on the role of Asian goods in forming consumption and production in Europe. My project colleagues and I work on different East India companies.
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My remit are the Danish and the Swedish companies and their trade with China between 1730 and 1760 approximately. I am currently writing up my results in a monograph to be published by Palgrave. The working title is Silk and Tea in the North – Scandinavian Trade and the Market for Asian Goods in Eighteenth Century Europe
The 1730s saw the establishment of direct trade between Scandinavia and Canton for the first time. Both companies used a the same businesses idea. Most of what they imported, and we are talking between 80% and 90 % of the goods, were re-exported from Copenhagen and Gothenburg, where the headquarters of the two companies were located.
The main markets for this re-export could be found on the continent and in Britain. However this was arguably less the case with the Chinese silk textiles, at least not the ones brought back by the Swedish Company and the focus in this paper.
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What you can see on this picture is a cut from a sales catalogues listing Chinese silk textiles for sale in Gothenburg in 1748. The goods were auctioned away in lots and this is the first lot, contained 30 pieces of Poisies Damask. Next to the type of textile there is information on the dimensions, and, most importantly here, the colour assortments of the lot.
Just to give you some idea of what the colours actually looked like, here are some pictures from Anders Berch’s collection which does include samples he received from the Swedish company, not all of it of course Damask pieces.
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Here are some pictures of eighteenth century silk clothes in Swedish collections, which I have been told very likely are Chinese in origin.
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It was the colour schemes that initially drew my attention to the trade in Chinese silk. One aim I have is to capture the role of Chinese silk, but also more generally Asian textiles, on the Scandinavian market focusing particularly on colours. What I will do here is to explore a few different ways by way we can use colours tracing changes to the trade and reception of silk.
This Scandinavian trade is of course part of the history of Asian textiles in Europe more generally; how it came to influence European consumption and production. The role of Asian cotton textiles in this process have been explored in several different contexts, very prominently by Giorgio Riello and his work on British and French developments. We know now how Indian cotton cloths, calicoes and chintzes, decorated with vivid colour fast colour prints or paintings became the object of desire for European consumers from different socio-economic groups. The growing trade in Indian textiles in the eighteenth century triggered import bans and import substitutions in Europe; institutional changes that together with knowledge transfer, were instrumental in promoting an European manufacturing of cotton, a process of central importance to the industrialisation that followed.
Silk, the production of which originated in China, has of course a history that predates the maritime trade of the European East India companies, it was a product that gave name to the land route on which gods travelled across the Eurasian continent. Moreover, silk and silk textiles were produced in Europe long before the 18th century, particularly in Italy, France and Britain. Europe had a vibrant silk culture with Lyon, Paris and London becoming centres in silk fashion. The regular invention of new trends reflected on the ambition of the most prominent central producers to stave off competition from manufacturers elsewhere in Europe. By the eighteenth century the wheel of fashion generated new patterns and new colour schemes on an annual basis, trends that reverberated across Europe.
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The influence of this long history of European silk consumption and production is clearly visible in the Scandinavian trade in Chinese silk. The types of silk traded by the Scandinavian companies were largely the same; different types of Damask, Satin, Taffeta were some of the most common types. These are types of weaves we are familiar with from the European production of silk textiles. The colour schemes are also familiar. Listed on the slide are the translated Swedish terms for colour names such as sky blue, himmelsblå, and citron, or lemon yellow, citrongul. French names for colours, such as Pounce and Couluer de Rose, were also adopted in the Scandinavian trade. As were, although not listed here, names reflecting the growing global trade. Different shades of brown were regularly described with references to coffee, chocolate, and cinnamon.
Judging by the colour nomenclature and types of weaves imported, the Chinese silk import corresponded largely with what was produced and consumed in Scandinavia and Europe already. If anything Eurasian silk textiles were fairly homogenous products, at least if we take into account the testimonies of museum curators. The geographical origin of early modern silk textiles that have survived in museums are often very hard to determine only by looking at them. We can contrast this with the trade in Indian cotton which generated a lot of imitation and innovation in the 18th century. There is little in the research on Chinese imported silk that suggest that it inspired “desire lead” product imitation of a similar kind.[1]
The sources I have worked with seem in fact to suggest that large bulk of Chinese silk that made its way to Europe in the eighteenth century conformed to European product standards more than anything.
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I have for example found very little evidence of Chinese colour terms penetrating the Eurasian trade. Take the term “tea colour” which was used in Chinese handbooks for dying silk from the 17th century. It refers by all account to a light yellow shade, reminiscent of the colour of brewed green tea, the type of tea preferred by the Chinese.
The term tea colour was used by the Chinese who provided the Europeans with silk textiles, in fact Paul van Dyke has found references to this colour in material relating to smuggling in Canton. The reason yellow, or here tea coloured textiles, were smuggled was that the emperor and his court had exclusive use of this colour, and red.
This circumstance promoted an elaborate system for bribing the Chinese inspectors employed to monitor the European East India companies trade activities. Without much effect, as we shall see below vast amounts of yellow and red silk textiles made it to Europe. The colour term “tea colour” did however no travel onwards with the goods, instead terms such as jonquille, citron, and straw are used to describe colours of a yellow nature.
With one possible exception, Mandarin green, I have found no evidence for any Chinese colour references making its way into the trade between Scandinavia and China. In fact there is a somewhat notable lack of innovation and change. Danish material relating to the negotiation with Chinese merchants about silk orders suggest a very standardised trade. Danish supercargoes instructed their Canton counter parts on the types of weaves, dimensions, patterns and colour schemes, the phrase “the best colours the land of China could offer” was used regularly in contracts. The Chinese merchant forwarded the orders to silk manufactures inland who took up to 3 months to deliver the goods. There were no direct contact between the Europeans and the Chinese weavers or dyers.
While the negotiations on patterns seemed to have involved prototypes there are few examples of sample colour books being used or at least referred to in the exchange between the Danes and the Chines. Another notable aspect is that the trade in itself seem to have generated relatively few problems or conflicts. Not only did colour and pattern specification seemed have been communicated with ease, there are only a few examples in the sources of Danish complaints that the silk goods did not meet the specifications stipulated in the contract. When there were problems they seemed to be well known ones, for example that purple or Cherry red coloured silk pieces had a tendency to run, and lighter colours did easily spot.
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Comparing description of goods traded by the Danes with goods traded by the English and Swedish suggest similar procedures and similar standards, not at least when it comes to the colour schemes, the same colour nomenclature is used by more or less all companies.
The company trade was of course not the only type of trade going on in Canton. Accounts from private trade in silk do also suggest a slightly different dynamic, where more attention was being paid to the colour schemes, including requests for more unusual colours. It is among privately traded goods we find references to “Dark sky blue”, “Light Sky blue”, “Light Cherry”, “Dark Cherry”, and “French Green”, colours I have not seen referred to in any Company trade.
Overall though the Company silk trade and most of what I found relating to private silk trade involve what by all account was a standardised colour schemes and standardised product types.
The impression is further reinforced if we look closer at colour schemes of Poisies Damask pieces put up for sale by the Swedish East India Company. This was the most common type of silk imported by the Swedish Company. An incomplete series of sales catalogues from 1733 to 1761 suggest that at least 24,125 pieces of Poisies Damask were imported, and that they came in 38 different colours or shades. As this graph describes, the top four colours was Crimson, followed by White, Jonquille yellow, Sky blue etc.
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Although it was the most common textile type imported by the Swedish company, and the EIC did also order vast amounts of it, there is actually some debate about what Poisies Damask refers to, what type of silk it was. Leanne Lee-Whitman has speculated that Poises Damask referes to a form of decorated (painted and printed) satin on the basis of the similarities between the weight of the satin and the Poisies Damask pieces imported from China by the English company.
This interpretation is supported by the Swedish case; silk labelled satin or “satin for lining” formed only a small share of the Scandinavian import.
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The comparably wide colour assortment, this graph, again based on the incomplete Swedish sales catalogues, suggest that Poisies Damask usually came in a wide variety of colours. This I think suggest it was used for clothing. In fact the Danish material use “Klädes Damask” or “Cloth Damask” as a synonym for Poisies Damask.
I think we can assume that textiles used in clothes were more sensitive to changing colour trends than for example textiles used in furnishing. Chinese Meuble Damask was typically only imported in a handful of colours.
In the light of this, a closer study of how the colour scheme of Poesies Damask changed should reveal the extent to which the trade with Chinese silk was sensitive to changing fashions in Europe.
With this mind I have tried to trace the changing colour schemes of the Poisies Damask: Is it possible to detect any trends? Well yes, although it is hard to represent and explain the change.
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In this graph I have grouped the colours into five different categories bringing the different shades of red (Crimson, Poppy, Scarlet, Incarnat, and Cherry); blue (“Dark”, “Middle”, “Light”, “Mazarine”, “Millan”, “Bleumerant”, and “Sky”); yellow (“Jonquille”, “Lemon”, “Paille”, and “Yellow”); green (“Celadon”, Light, “Dark” and “Green”), and Grey (“Pearl, Lead, and Silver) together.
Some of the trends described by the graph can be connected with observations and comments in other material relating to the trade in Canton. For example Black, was very common across different types of Chinese silk textiles in the beginning of the 1740s, in both companies. And here I wonder if it corresponds events in Europe, possibly some declaration of official mourning, generating a larger demand for black clothes. In general it seemed a safe bet, as the Danish supercargo, Christian Lindrup put it, “black never goes out of fashion”.
In other respects, the graph might suggest that the Swedish East India Company played quite a safe game, importing a relatively broad spread of colours. However, and although for the sake of clarity, using colour categories such as e.g. red and blue is helpful, it is also rather counter intuitive.
The specific colour nomenclature used in the Chines-European silk trade reflected of course a need to distinguish between the many different types of blue and red.
If we study changes over time within the broader colour categories rather than between them we can also pick out some notable trends.
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Take the case of red illustrated by this graph. It suggested that Crimson dominated the red colour spectra between 1752 and 1761, between 2/3 and 9/10 of all red pieces were Crimson, the only other red colour was Poppy red. Crimson was strong before too but less dominating. (constituting only a quarter of red pieces in 1733, Poppy red and Incarnat making up more than a third each of the other red pieces in the first Swedish cargo of Poisies Damask).
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Among the blue colours we have almost a reversed development, Sky blue was by far the most dominating shade of blue in the beginning of the period. In 1733 nearly 4/5 of all blue pieces were Sky blue. Although this declined by 1748 still half of the blue pieces were Sky blue. The next year however there was no Sky blue Poisies Damask at all for sale. The new dominant blue, making up more than 7/10 of the blue pieces in 1749 and more than half of the pieces in 1751, was Bleumerant blue. Although the Sky blue shade returns (making up more than half of all blue pieces 1757) there are several years (1752-55, 1758, 1761) when there are no Sky blue or Bleumerant coloured pieces put up sale. Instead the blue Poisies Damask cargo was made up of Light blue, Millan blue and Dark blue in approximately equal proportions.