China Seas Fabric: Batavia - Multi Blue on 100% Cotton / Sateen (FROM HEBERLEIN IN SWITZERLAND)

Batavia was the name the Dutch gave to Jakarta when they decided it belonged to them in 1619. The Dutch East India Company — the VOC, the first multinational corporation in history and arguably the template for every corporate overreach that followed — ran it for nearly two centuries as the headquarters of their Asian trading empire. They shipped spice, silk, and cotton through it. They also shipped everything else that empires ship, which is why the city eventually asked them to leave.

The flowers on this fabric are not Dutch. They are not Indonesian. They are the dream of tropical abundance that Europe carried home from those voyages and spent three centuries trying to accurately render — the garden that was always more vivid in the imagination than in the colony.
This particular version was printed by Heberlein in Switzerland, on cotton sateen, which means the ground has a luminosity that changes with the light. Blue at noon. Nearly black at dusk. The flowers remain orange, pink, green, and gold throughout.

15 yards. 70% off. One of a kind in the way that all Heberlein lots are: the mill is gone, the printing is gone, and this is what remains.

All Quantities shown in Yards.

Please note that colors may not represent accurately in photo. Last photo shows full width of the fabric.  Additional photo(s) provided to show scale, not colorway. Please contact us before purchase with any questions. ALL SALES ARE FINAL, and we do not send cuttings for approval.