We do not know with certainty the circumstances attending the introduction into Europe of the manufacture of printed fabrics. Long before English weavers had undertaken the industry, the printing of fabrics flourished on the Continent. The sixteenth century references to printed cottons in England are so few and so vague that we are virtually without knowledge of the earliest manufactories of these fabrics. We do know, however, that veritable legions of skilled craftsmen in the textile arts settled in the British Isles during the latter half of the seventeenth century. It is to them, probably, that the art owes its introduction there. The Print Room of the British Museum exhibits a quaint old trade card--itself the impression of a wood-block such as the cloth-printers used--which bears the representation of a cotton-printer at work. In the costume of his time--the reign of James II--he stands before a long, broad Jacobean table, lengthwise of which lies a piece of cloth, one third showing the pattern which the printer has impressed on it. Behind the left end of the table is set a Jacobean stool on which rests a circular basin containing the color, which a boy is waiting to apply to the wood-block for printing. The master printer is in the act of impressing a section of the pattern on the white cloth by means of the wood-block, which he is hammering with a wooden mallet. The text (in script of the period) reads, “_Jacob Stamps living at ye sighn of the Callicoes Lineings Silkes Stuffs New or Ould at Reasonable Rates_.” This old mode of block-printing obtained for fully two hundred years until the inventive genius of the nineteenth century joined hands with commerce, to the craft’s almost complete discouragement. However, a revival of interest in the old arts was inspired by such enthusiasts as William Morris. The hand-printed fabrics have been restored to favor, and to-day they again play an important part in the decoration of the modern home. Richmond, Bow, and Old Ford, London, became the earliest centers for printed chintzes in England. The few extant specimens of seventeenth-century chintz show us that the early printed cottons were crude enough. At first more than one color was not attempted. The next step appears to have been to add to the monochrome effect by applying washes of dye, either freehand or stencil application, to the outline pattern. This was done by brushing the color on as required, a process slow, laborious, and fraught with uncertainties. An examination of these early pieces, treasures though they are from an antiquarian point of view, reveals a smudgy appearance resulting from the thickness of the dye-inks with which the patterns were printed. The early materials were very coarse canvas-like cloths.