Quotation from: General Science

Written by: Bertha M. Clark


230. Color Designs in Cloth. It is thought that the earliest
attempts at making "fancy materials" consisted in painting designs on
a fabric by means of a brush. In more recent times the design was cut
in relief on hard wood, the relief being then daubed with coloring
matter and applied by hand to successive portions of the cloth. The
most modern method of design-making is that of machine or roller
printing. In this, the relief blocks are replaced by engraved copper
rolls which rotate continuously and in the course of their rotation
automatically receive coloring matter on the engraved portion. The
cloth is to be printed is then drawn uniformly over the rotating roll,
receiving color from the engraved design; in this way, the color
pattern is automatically printed on the cloth with perfect regularity.
In cases where the fabrics do not unite directly with the coloring
matter, the design is supplied with a mordant and the impression made
on the fabric is that of the mordant; when the fabric is later
transferred to a dye bath, the mordanted portions, represented by the
design, unite with the coloring matter and thus form the desired color
patterns.

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