"Painted and printed calicoes constituted the most important class of Indian fabric exported from Surat in the seventeenth century. They covered a wide range of quality, the best and the more expensive being painted rather than printed . . . . In the former case, dyes and mordants were applied to the cloth, not with a wood-block, but free-hand with brush. Thus. each painted design had the character of individual drawing with the human and sensuous touch, instead of being limited to the repeat pattern imposed by the print-block. Sometimes painting and printing techniques were combined, but the finest decorative calicoes from both western India and the Coromandel Coast were of the painted kind."