Exhibition: “The art of trademark in Indo-British textile trade” sheds light on the forgotten art of textile labels

The first thing you notice is the heat; it is all around, almost palpable. Then there are the sounds, deafening, each vendor trying to shout louder than the next. “Madam, here, here, Kashmiri silk, you won’t find anywhere.” “Come to my stall, please, I will show you the widest range.” Then there are the smells of course, some pleasant like the hot chai brewing, others not so much, like the sweat of hundreds if not a thousand people squeezed in close quarters. But the sights make up for it all - rows and rows of neatly folded cloth bales, one more colourful than the next: rich silks next to humble cottons rubbing shoulders with delicate muslins.

And the best part - no polyesters or any manmade materials. Because we are walking through an Indian bazaar of the 19th or 20th century. The most famous and biggest ones were in major cities like Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi and Hyderabad. They served as hubs for both locally produced handloom and imported British fabrics.

A little known fact is that each bale of cloth sported a glossy, multicoloured paper label showing different images - a dancing elephant, an Indian deity, a steamship and more. These labels or textile tickets - also known as tikats, tikas or chaaps in the vernacular - were an early form of branding and advertising. A current exhibition at Mumbai’s Bhau Daji Lad Museum in the eastern suburb of Bycalla has dedicated a special exhibition to this forgotten art.

“The art of trademark in Indo-British textile trade,” on until 7th June 2026, sheds light on the textile tickets used in the India for different international markets. British cotton had a presence in markets in Asia, South America, Europe and Africa, where they competed with American, Swiss, Dutch and German firms. Indian mills and merchants were important players in the global market as well.

“As some of the earliest mass-produced colour advertisements in the subcontinent, textile labels stirred desire, evoked memory and imbued meaning into the otherwise mundane act of commerce,” explains the exhibtion’s introductory text.

“Their designs, often encased in informative borders, bore vivid imagery — divine figures, mythological scenes, regal portraits, political symbols and even whimsical tableaus — chosen so that they might resonate with local aesthetics and aspirations,” continues the text.

These recognisable textiles labels enticed customers, cultivated brand loyalty and reinforced the perceived quality of the cloth; the Instagram of the 19th century we may say.

Where did textile label advertising originate?

The colourful textile tickets arrived in India by the thousands, stuck on yards and yards of the cotton fabric manufactured in British mills that flooded India in the 19th century thanks to a colonial economic cycle: Raw cotton was shipped to Britain, machine-manufactured into finished cloth, and imported back to India, often duty-free.

By 1870, nearly 80 million pounds worth of British textiles were exported to India, leading to the collapse of local, traditional weaving industries like the local handloom sector. However, later in the 19th century, with British backing, cotton mills were set up in India, starting with Calcutta and then Bombay in 1854. With fabrics made in local textile mills, the design of textile labels advertising local factories and imagery soon followed.

How were textile labels made?

Textile labels are more complex than they may look - they were produced using chromolithography, a revolutionary printing technique that democratised access to colour imagery.

Chromolithography uses the fact that grease and water repel each other. A design is drawn with a greasy crayon on limestone and repeated for each colour on a different stones. Depending on the intricacy of the design and the number of colours used, as many as twenty stones or metal plates were used.

While the process was time-consuming and could take months to complete, a true chromolithograph was printed entirely in colour, providing a much higher quality, consistent reproduction than hand-coloured prints.

Trademarks had to be registered and in some cases also translated - into English or multiple Indian languages, depending on in which region a merchant or mill was active. The registration process was lengthy and included much correspondence back and fro.

What was the inspiration behind textile labels?

Newspapers and popular magazines of the 19th and 20th century, full of colour, satire and humour, left their mark on the textile tickets of the time. Artists also brought to life enchanted tales and poems from faraway lands and drew from sources as diverse as paintings, illustrated manuscripts, silk paintings and sculpture as well as prints, photographs and postcards.

Vice versa, Indian imagery and mythological scenes made their way to Europe where they inspired illustrated books, postcards and local textile tickets.

The world of modernity also influenced textile label imagery. After all, a series of technological advances from the late 19th century like the light bulb, the telephone, wireless telegraphy and the automobile transformed how people lived, worked, communicated and travelled.

This also meant an evolution in values, philosophies and the way in which people, especially women, lived, thought and worked. Fashion was a strong marker of the new idea of the self and different “modern” personae were represented on textile tickets.

“Tickets showed the new spaces and roles women could occupy, in a period when this shifting of boundaries provoked intense social debate in Britain and India,” explains the exhibition text.

No wonder that soon, textile labels transcended their commercial purpose and became coveted collectibles and cherished memories. “The textile label is a testament to how images shape perception, value and desire — a value as relevant today as it was over a century ago,” sums up the accompanying text. “These beautiful paper labels show us how the histories of trade, colonial encounters and art culture are deeply intermeshed.”