An Embroidered linen coverlet (Colcha), Satgaon, Bengal, India, for the Portuguese Market, late 17th - early 18th century

Indian textiles have been among the most important trade goods globally. The specific group of Indian embroideries, known as Colcha, were produced in India for the European market, during the 16th and 17th centuries. The Portuguese introduced them to Europe. They are recorded in European inventories in Portugal, Spain, Austria, Italy and England. Their influence was widespread, decoratively and technically. They were used as coverlets and as hangings, as items of prestige and status.

The Portuguese having discovered the first sea route to India in 1498 were the earliest Europeans, a hundred years before the Dutch and English, to establish a presence in India, first at Cochin in 1503 and then in Goa in 1510. Goa acted as their centre point for goods from all over India and from other Portuguese trade depots further east. In turn Lisbon became synonymous with the exotica of the east, fuelling the Renaissance taste for collecting the extraordinary and luxurious. The earliest European record of a Bengali colcha is found in the Lendas da India of Gaspar Correa (1495-1561), where he mentions the diplomatic gift of a colcha to Vasco da Gama in 1502, when he visited the King of Melinde on the East African coast. Studying the European inventories has emphasised the value of the 16th/17th trade of these pieces and use as diplomatic gifts, as there are hardly any documentary or material traces of in India itself. Catherine of Austria (1507-78), who had married João III (r.1521-57), assembled the first important Kunstkammer in Portugal, using a network of agents and viceroys throughout the east to supply her with the rare and unusual. She is recorded as receiving three Bengali quilts in 1558 (along with Indian rugs, jewels and lacquer). Prized too beyond the borders of Portugal, ‘a Bengalla quilt 3 ½ yards long and 3 yards broad … embroidered all over with pictures of men and crafts in yellow silk’ is recorded as being sold at auction in London in 1618. A Bess of Hardwick inventory records the arrival in 1601 of a Bengali quilt of yellow with birds and beasts, and her passion for collecting textiles was well known. 

Bengal had long been a centre of high quality textiles, embroidered in the local wild (tussar) silk, but the enterprising Portuguese merchants clearly commissioned the decoration of these quilts specifically for the European market. There are representations of figures dressed in European costume wearing doublets, epaulets, pumpkin breeches, and caps and in each of the four corners the double headed eagles of the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire and symbol of the Habsburg Empire became through association with Portugal, the crest of Goa. The colcha are distinctive for their variety of motifs, inspiration and imagination within the designs. They combined Eastern and Western religious narratives, Graeco-Roman mythology, symbolism and combined it with realism, figures in fashionable contemporary clothing, with the mythical and fantastical. Although the designs vary the motifs used were similarly inspired. The influence of the Western design playing a larger part in the designs as the influence filtered back for commissions for the European market. In contrast, using the technical skills in India and especially Bengal and , for which they were admired and renowned, the colour palette of the export pieces was restrained. Many of the known examples recorded from inventories and found at auction use the yellow tussar silk.

Two pieces that likely date to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century are embroidered in multicoloured silk, and their design is composed of circular medallions enclosing lotus patterns, interlocking star shapes, and bands of human figures and animals. These are in Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire and in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon (No. 3413). The change to an almost monochrome yellow and white palette and composition of concentric panels and bands, with the addition of foreign iconography were innovations for a particular type for export, which was produced only until the mid-seventeenth century.

Comparable Colchas are in collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Inv.No.IS.6-1964, and 616-1886), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (MMA 34.104.1 and MMA 1970.173); the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York (1947-51-1); the British Museum, London (2000,1213,0.1 has a more restrained composition); the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (T20e.4); and the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon (Inv. No. 3692).

For examples at auction see Sotheby’s BC/AD Sculpture Ancient to Modern, London, 9 July 2020, lot 118; Lyon & Turnbull, 3 September 2020, lot 614; Bonhams, Islamic & Indian, London, 30 April 2019, lot 150; Christie’s, Arts of India, London,12 June 2014, lot 34; and Christie's, Indian & Islamic Costume & Textiles, London, 14 October 2005, lot 487.

Bibliography:

Rosemary Crill, The Earliest Survivors": The Indian Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, in R. Crill, (ed.),Textiles from India: the Global Trade. Calcutta, 2006, pp. 245-260

John Irwin, 'Indo-Portuguese Embroideries of Bengal', Art and letters. Journal of the Royal India, Pakistan and Ceylon Society, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, 1952, pp. 65-73

Rahul Jain, Rapture, The Art of Indian Textiles, New Delhi, 2011, pl.14, p.52

Barbara Karl, ‘Marvellous things are made with needles’: Bengal colchas in European inventories, circa 1580–1630, Journal of the History of Collections, Volume 23, Issue 2, November 2011, pp.301–313

Brbara Karl, ‘The Narrative Scheme of a Bengal Colcha Dating from the Early 17th Century Commissioned by the Portuguese’, Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, Lincoln, Nebraska, 2006, pp.438-4

Maria José de Mendonça, Embroidered Quilts from the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisboa, Kensington Palace, 1978, no. 6.

Amelia Peck, Interwoven Globe, The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800, New York, 2013,

T. P. Pereira and C. Serrano, Indian embroideries for the Portuguese market, end of 16th century/beginning of 17th century, The Textile Collection of the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, 2007

Philipp von Zabern, Helmut Trnek, and Nuno Vassallo e Silva, eds. Exotica: The Portuguese Discoveries and the Renaissance Kunstkammer, Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2001, Exhibition catalogue, p.184, no.73