{"id":1282,"date":"2025-12-23T16:27:53","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T16:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/?p=1282"},"modified":"2025-12-23T21:05:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T21:05:21","slug":"issue-59-3-textile-tickets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/issue-59-3-textile-tickets\/","title":{"rendered":"The Visual Language of Textile Tickets in 20th-Century British India: A Collection from B. Taylor and Co."},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"sitecontainer\">\n<div class=\"pagecontainer\">\n<article class=\"vj-article\">\n<div class=\"articlesidebar\">\n<h5>Issue 59.3<\/h5>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/issue-59-3-editorial\/\">Word | Image | Space | Materiality | Experience<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/issue-59-3-legibility-readability\/\">Beyond (Type)Face Value: A Systematic Literature Review Examining Design Factors Influencing the Legibility and Readability of Typography<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/issue-59-3-bilingual-cover-design\/\">Scripts in Dialogue: Reinterpreting Visible Language Covers through Bilingual Design Workshops in Kuwait<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/issue-59-3-hypertangible-novel\/\">Constructing the Hypertangible Novel: Writing and Design as Process<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/issue-59-3-sensational-design\/\">Sensational Design: Layout and Display Typography in the Visual Rhetoric of Information Disorder<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Visual Language of Textile Tickets in 20th-Century British India: A Collection from B. Taylor and Co.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/issue-59-3-ar-campus-wayfinding\/\">Augmented Reality for Campus Wayfinding: Enhancing Navigation Efficiency and Student Social Engagement \u2014 A Case Study of Leeds University Union<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/issue-59-3-james-mosley\/\">Professor James Mosley, a Memoir<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/issue-59-3-michael-twyman\/\">Professor Michael Twyman<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/Issue-59-3\/VL-59.3-Full-Issue.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Download Issue 59.3 \u27a4<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"articlecontent\">\n<h1>The Visual Language of Textile Tickets in 20th-Century British India: A Collection from B. Taylor and Co.<\/h1>\n<h3>Ragini Siruguri<\/h3>\n<h4 style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">University of Reading, UK (r.siruguri[at]outlook.com)<\/h4>\n<div class=\"abstractbox\">\n<p><span class=\"smallblueheading\">Abstract:<\/span> This essay examines the visual language of textile tickets \u2014 small, printed labels used on cotton bales and fabric lengths \u2014 produced by British printers for export to colonial India between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. Emerging amidst expanding colonial trade and advances in printing technology, these ephemera evolved into vivid, ideologically charged artifacts. Focusing on a collection of textile tickets produced by Manchester-based printing firm B. Taylor and Co., this study explores three recurring visual themes: empire, religion, and gender. It argues that these images did more than advertise textiles: they glorified British imperial authority, appropriated Indian religious imagery, and idealized women as passive ornamental objects to enhance appeal in a male-dominated trade. Through visual and contextual analysis, this essay demonstrates that textile tickets \u2014 often valued only for aesthetics \u2014 also functioned as everyday instruments of colonial control.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"keywordsbox\">\n<p><span class=\"smallblueheading\">Keywords:<\/span> British Empire; colonial India; design history; iconography; Indo-British cotton trade; textile tickets; visual culture<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a class=\"viewarticlebtn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/Issue-59-3\/VL-59-3-Siruguri-8850.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Download PDF<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"articlepdfviewer\">\n<object \ndata=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/Issue-59-3\/VL-59-3-Siruguri-8850.pdf\" type=\"application\/pdf\" width=\"100%\" height=\"100%\"><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/Issue-59-3\/VL-59-3-Siruguri-8850.pdf\" width=\"100%\" height=\"100%\" style=\"border: none;\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/object>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"authorbox\">\n<p><span class=\"smallblueheading\">Author<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ragini Siruguri<\/strong> is a visual communication designer and researcher based in South India. Her work spans book design, typography, and visual culture, with particular interest in print ephemera and multiscript typography in Indian contexts. She holds an MA by Research in Typography &#038; Graphic Communication from the University of Reading, United Kingdom, supported by the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation. The essay is based on research undertaken during her postgraduate studies under the mentorship of Gerry Leonidas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a class=\"viewarticlebtn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/Issue-59-3\/VL-59-3-Siruguri-8850.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Download PDF<\/a><br \/>\n<\/article>\n<div class=\"articlecitebox\">\n<div>\n<p class=\"blueurllink\">DOI being generated<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cite this article:<\/strong><br \/>SSiruguri, R. (2025). The visual language of textile tickets in<br \/>\n20th-century British India: A collection from B. Taylor and Co. <i>Visible Language<\/i>, 59(3), 379\u2013399. https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/issue-59-3-textile-tickets\/<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>First published online May 22, 2025. \u00a9 2025 Visible Language \u2014 this article is open access, published under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.<\/p>\n<p><pre>https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal<\/pre>\n<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"vlconsortiumheading\"><strong>Visible Language Consortium:<\/strong><\/span><br \/>University of Leeds (UK)<br \/>University of Cincinnati (USA)<br \/>North Carolina State University (USA)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Issue 59.3 Word | Image | Space | Materiality | Experience Beyond (Type)Face Value: A Systematic Literature Review Examining Design Factors Influencing the Legibility and Readability of Typography Scripts in Dialogue: Reinterpreting Visible Language Covers through Bilingual Design Workshops in Kuwait Constructing the Hypertangible Novel: Writing and Design as Process Sensational Design: Layout and Display &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/issue-59-3-textile-tickets\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Visual Language of Textile Tickets in 20th-Century British India: A Collection from B. Taylor and Co.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-59-3","category-research-article","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1282"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1361,"href":"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions\/1361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visible-language.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}