The Textile Manufactures of India, a 18 volume set of fabric sample books was put together in 1866 by John Forbes Watson, Reporter on the Products of India, to show British manufacturers the types of fabrics made in South Asia and reproduce similar textiles for the vast Indian market.
One result of these books was that the British manufacturers flooded the Indian markets with cheap imitations, which had, not surprisingly, a detrimental effect on the Indian textile industry.
According to Textile Researcher and Curator Savita Suri, the strategy was heartless.
"It is not so much that they took off our textiles and made it on Mills...there is a very clinical brutal approach to this and that affects in a sense...because Indian textiles are loaded with stories, stories of the communities who make them and who wear them. They took away all our stories and when they took away all our stories they took away our identity with it as well. They sort of made all of us the same in a very cold, heartless manner."
The books contain 700 samples divided into 18 volumes, starting with turbans and ‘garment pieces’ for men and women, which includes sari, dhoti and lunghi fabrics. There are then volumes of muslin, calico and ‘piece goods’ – fabrics made in standard lengths for multi purposes. The final volumes include silks, woollens and even some carpets.
Each page contains a textile sample measuring about 35 x 20cm along with information about where it was made, how it was worn or used, and the price, size and weight of the original fabric from which the sample was cut.
The Harris Museum & Art Gallery has built a website that makes all 700 textile samples in these books available to explore digitally. You can browse through the fabrics by volume, or you can search according to categories such as material, object type, pattern, decorative technique or use.