Calico is a plain cotton fabric which originally came from Calicut in India.
Textile printing was already well established there, and in the 17^th century calico cloth imported from India began to be printed in England.

This new fabric threatened the existing woollen industry in Britain and in 1712 an excise duty of 3d per yard on printed calico was imposed. In 1721 the wearing of printed calicoes was actually prohibited! This law was repealed in 1774 but duties were not abolished until 1831.

Printing of fustian (a coarse cotton/linen cloth) had still been permitted through the eighteenth century and much of the British fustian industry was based in Lancashire, where businesses developed skills in textile printing.
It was therefore natural that when manufacture of printed calico was again permitted, Lancashire became the main centre for its production.

Calico printing was at first performed manually by pressing carved wooden blocks, dipped in ink, onto the fabric, but in 1785 machine printing using engraved copper rollers was introduced.
Block printing continued to be used for smaller orders when it was not worth the expense of making the rollers, but had largely been superseded by the 1880s.

A Mather and Platt calico printing machine.