There is a buzz of excitement in the region of Kutch as Somaiya Kala Vidya prepares for the convocation and fashion show of this year’s design graduates on 9th January in the village of Bhujodi, just 9 km from Kutch’s capital, Bhuj. In my previous post I wrote about the jury. The awards the jury decided will be presented during the convocation, and select pieces of the graduates’ final collections will be modelled on the runway. The graduates also got the chance to mingle with the Bombay craft and design enthusiasts and potential new clients at Artisans’ Gallery in Kala Ghoda for an exhibition of their collections from 21st –…
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Sircilla: a weaving industry fighting to survive
In Sircilla, a once thriving handloom town, there are now less than ten weavers, none of them under the age of 70, all looking as if they should have retired long ago. But the term retirement is unknown to weavers. They weave until they can physically weave no longer. There is not a single young handloom weaver here now. But then, where is the incentive to work in handloom when the earnings are just 80-100 rupees a day, while a powerloom weaver earns about 4 – 500 rupees because he can produce so much more? The government are supporting these handloom weavers while they’re still practicing but there is no…
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Textile Travels in India: November
Highlights – Introduction to the weaving of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. – Meetings with influential and inspiring people in the textile and craft world in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Kanchipuram. – Visit to Weavers’ Service Centres in the cities above and the Indian Institute of Handloom Technology in Salem. – Visit to shops, designers and NGOs creating innovative designs using local handloom fabrics. I’ve just arrived in Ahmedabad, via Pune on the same train I caught on my way down to Bagalkot two months ago, the Lokmanya Express. This time I was coming from Salem, about 80 km east of Coimbatore a big industrial hub known for its long…
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A tour of artist Geeta Khandelwal’s Bombay home
On a recent visit to Bombay I was privileged to visit the home of eminent quilting artist, textile collector and author of Godharis of Maharastra, Geeta Khandelwal with Judy Frater and a group of artisan-designers from Kutch and Karnataka. The exhibition of Bhujodi and Bagalkot weaves and Suf and Lucknow embroideries (I have written about the project in a previous post) had finished the day before and there was a free morning before everyone had trains to catch home. The idea was for the artisans to experience the home of the kind of customer who buys their textiles, to further their market knowledge and have a first hand insight, which is…
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Handloom journeys in India
I’m back in India again, and during the last two weeks I’ve been from Mumbai down to Bagalkot in Karnataka, back up to Mumbai then up to Kutch. I was in Bagalkot to visit the weavers of the Ilkal sari, named after the town of Ilkal, an ancient weaving centre. The sari is characterised by its cotton warp, art silk border and art silk pallu in bright reds and greens with shimmering motifs including temples, hanige (comb), koti kammli (fort ramparts), toputenne (jowar) and rampa (mountain range) on the pallu. Alongside Somaiya Kala Vidya’s (SKV) pilot course last year, they ran an outreach project, which involved three weavers from Bhujodi travelling…
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Selvedge celebrates Indian textiles
The theme of the new Selvedge issue is India! So of course it is full of colour, beautiful pattern, rich history, fascinating stories and contemporary innovations within textiles. It also highlights the important issues arising from fast textile production and demand, and the place of handcrafted textiles. On pages 62 to 64 various writers discuss the current situation of handloom in India and what the future holds. This includes Laila Tyabji of Indian craft NGO Dastkar highlighting the recent lobby against the government’s decision to repeal the Reservations Act which gives exclusivity to certain handloom products and aims to prevent powerloom copies. Luckily, the protests were heard and the Ministry of Textiles withdrew the…
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Textiles in Depth: Handloom Weaving in India, part four. End of the journey
The journey to Maheshwar was long and exhausting. A long bumpy bus journey to Indore, a three hour wait for a bus then a three hour bus journey to Maheshwar. But it didn’t take long to realise whey I’d made all that effort as I walked up the streets and heard an orchestra of weaving looms! My guesthouse was the cheap and comfortable Hansa Heritage Hotel, situated at the bottom of the Ahilya fort which dominates the town. The room was surprisingly large with a traditional warm and earthy decor including Bagh block-printed bed covers (Bagh is a town not far away from Maheshwar which is renowned for its natural-dye and…
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Interview with Kuldip Gadhvi of Kutch Adventures India
Kuldip Gadhvi runs Kutch Adventures India, an award-winning tour company in Kutch that helps tourists engage with the local culture and people. I spoke to him about his passion for the region, its nature, people and cultural heritage and winning the World Responsible Tourism award for the best in engaging people and culture. What made you want to start as a tour guide in Kutch, and how did you begin? I naturally enjoy showing people things and am enthusiastic to share experiences with people. It first started when I bumped into a group from London who came to Bhuj. One lady asked if I would take her group to the desert…
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Textiles in Depth: Handloom Weaving in India, Part Three
While in Rajkot, I called the other contact that Shamji had given me – Chandrakant Patel, who I was told managed an organisation that produce Khadi – a handspun and handwoven fabric, in Gondal, just 40 km from Rajkot. I asked if it was ok for me to come and visit for my research. About an hour later I received a call from Durgesh Jadeja, who informed me he worked as the fashion designer and PR at Udyog Bharti – the name of the organisation. He said he lived in Rajkot and was travelling to Gondal the following morning by car and would I like a lift. He also said…
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Textiles in Depth: Handloom Weaving in India, Part Two
When I visited Shamji in Bhujodi (see previous post) and told him of my research, he gave me the names and contact details of a few weavers I should visit in Saurashtra, the region to the south of Kutch in Gujarat – an area I had not yet visited. The first was Laljibhai Parmar who lives in Rajkot and is a member of an extended family of Ikat weavers. Laljibhai is not actually a weaver, although he hails from a weaving family, but his extended family are practicing weaving. Laljibhai makes the phanni – the reed section of the beater that beats the weaving in between each passing of the shuttle.…
