The old-time chintzes are not so easily picked up nowadays. However, there are still excellent chances of occasional “finds,” even in antique-combed America, where, happily, collecting has come to be one of our chief pastimes. I know one collector who has been so fortunate as to obtain many quaint specimens of old printed fabrics at small cost, from an upholsterer in his own town. From time to time chairs and sofas were brought to the upholsterer to be re-covered. Often these had several layers of material under the outer one, and below those of later days he would find, now and then, coverings of old printed cotton fabrics. Among these were a lovely spray-pattern chintz of the Queen Anne period and a hand-print of pastoral design by one R. Jones, manufacturer of Old Ford, London, who produced patterned chintzes about the year 1760. Many of the new printed cotton fabrics have borrowed their patterns from these interesting textile ancestors, though nowadays, in the case of monochrome and duochrome prints, the color effects are somewhat richer than those that obtained in the printed fabrics of the eighteenth century, with their cold chocolate browns, bottle-greens, and ox-blood reds. For the collector there will naturally be an inimitable charm about the original pieces, not to mention their historic interest, while old multicolored chintzes cannot be surpassed in loveliness. Chintz attained a beauty and a distinction of its own when it attracted the fancy of the fashionables of the eighteenth century. To maintain its favor, it did not rest content with being imitative but developed its own resources with a consequent richness that marks its place among decorative fabrics of the early days. A sixteenth-century Portuguese writer, by name Odoardo Barbosa, gives us an interesting early reference to printed fabrics: “Great quantities of cotton cloths, admirably painted, are held in highest estimation.” But even some two hundred years before his time the narrators of the romance of commerce were celebrating the chintzes of the Coromandel India coast. Doubtless these printed fabrics of the earlier centuries attained an intricacy and beauty that were long denied the European printed textiles which they inspired. Early examples of the latter are in no way comparable, artistically or technically, with contemporary India prints. Even to-day it would be difficult to improve esthetically on the beautiful printed stuffs that come to us from the countries of the Orient.