Calico is a cotton cloth named from Calicut, a city of India. It was first brought to England by the East India Company in 1631. The name is generally given to any plain white cotton cloth, and in America it is applied to printed cottons. In 1721 a statute was passed imposing a penalty of five pounds upon the wearer, and twenty pounds upon the seller of a piece of calico. In 1736 the law was amended to allow calico manufactured in Great Britain, provided that the warp was entirely of linen yarn. Between the summer of 1767 and the summer of 1768 eighty persons were convicted and fined for wearing printed calico in London alone, and seizures of imported printed calico were common. In 1774 the law was amended and printed cotton goods were allowed on payment of a duty of threepence a yard; in 1806 the duty was raised to threepence halfpenny, supposedly to prevent the demand for calico from interfering with the demand for linen and woollen stuffs. Research Calico
Abbreviations
Costume
Research Calico