Silk and Tea in the North by Hodacs Hanna

Author:Hodacs, Hanna
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781137455451
Publisher: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

Lustring, paduasoy and gorgoroon

While poisee damask and bed damask textiles were generally more expensive than the taffeta and pekin pieces traded in Canton and in Gothenburg, they were not the most expensive goods imported in larger quantities. Lustring refers to a ‘light crisp silk’; it was a standard eighteenth-century silk-dress material in Europe but it was also used for banners. Some of the most fashionable silks produced in England were sold as lustring. The name derives from the ‘process of lustriating’ the warp, which was coated, heated and stretched before the weaving started. The finished weave might have been treated in a similar manner too.74 Some of the most expensive textiles purchased by the DAC were lustring; in 1755 the company bought twenty pieces of painted lustring ‘for clothes’ at a price of seventeen taels per piece. They were 15.68 m long and 71 cm wide. The largest batch, 250 pieces of plain lustring, 16.4 m by 71 cm, came in an assortment of eleven colours; each piece cost 9.3 taels, while lustring with embroidery, two designs, and in the same dimension cost the company 12.7 taels in 1755.75

Lustring only appears sporadically in the Swedish trade. One exception is from 1736 when forty-nine plain lustring pieces, 23.13 m long, were sold at a price of between 121 and 122 silver dollars in Gothenburg.76 Lustring with embroidery fetched even higher prices; in 1733 a white lustring with white embroidery was sold for 241 silver dollars. No specification of the sizes of these exclusive pieces are provided in the catalogues.77 Perhaps the embroidery changed the value of the textile so radically that the dimensions of the fabric, its width and length, became somewhat subordinated?

Paduasoy was a type of satin weave, which had ‘fine cross-ridges’ and which sometimes sold for a very high price.78 The standard length of the Danish traded paduasoy pieces was 22.1 m, although there are exceptions with pieces measuring 16.04 m; standard widths were 53 and 57 cm.79 Many paduasoy batches came in a variety of colours, and some were embroidered; prices varied depending on embellishment. In 1757 the Danes paid 17.2 taels for fifty pieces of standard-sized paduasoy with embroidery, and 13.2 taels for the plain coloured ones.80 The largest batch of paduasoy traded by the Swedish Company included 750 pieces put up for sale in Gothenburg in 1748. They were significantly shorter, 16.31 m, and a bit wider than the standard Danish cargo, and sold for an average of 60.55 silver dollars per piece.81 Another large Swedish parcel put up for sale in 1745 did, however, have similar lengths to the Danish: 23.13 m by 59 cm and sold for between 75.21 and 69.24 silver dollars. The colour assortment was limited, and significantly more than half of the pieces in every lot of thirty were black, which according to Lee-Withman was a standard colour in the EIC paduasoy cargo.82 Singular pieces of richly embellished paduasoy could also sell for very high prices; in 1733 Colin Campbell bought

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