I was delighted to receive the TSA Student award to attend and present my research at the biennial symposium which this year was held in Vancouver, Canada. It was my first TSA symposium and first visit to the city and I was impressed with the attention to detail in the organisation and schedule, and the variety of inspiring, thought provoking and quality papers by scholars and practitioners responding to the symposium theme ‘The Social Fabric Deep Local to Pan Global’. Many of the papers and keynotes did well to respond to issues relevant to the locality of Vancouver, such as decolonisation, reconciliation of First Nation communities and the repatriation of…
-
-
Kharad Weaving of Kachchh
A display of geometic and pictorial patterned dhurries adorns the walls of weaver Tejsibhai Dhana Marwada in the village of Sanjotnagar, near Bhuj in Kutch,. Woven into the kharad (Sindhi word for carpet) on the most basic and ancient of looms, are the stories of these weavers’ lives and experiences. Some of these narrative pieces were initiated by Carole Douglas for her exhibition Zindagi jo Vanat – The Weave of Life. Tejsi explained to us the stories depicted in the pieces. One tells of the Marwada Meghwal community migration. They came to Kachchh from Marwad in Rajasthan about 600 years ago, hence their name Marwada which accords a sustained sense…
-
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…
-
Kalamkari and Mata ni Pachedi painting in Ahmedabad
This post moves away from the peaceful, rural villages of previous craft profiles, onto the bustling, polluted and noisy city of Ahmedabad. This city has been named the ‘Manchester of the East’ because of its rich and ancient history of textile production. The city is well-known for its block printing, and was the home of the trade of saudigiri printed textiles for the Thai market which began about two hundred years ago, reached its peak at the turn of the century, but declined during the Second World War. The saudigiri motifs share more similarities to those of the malir, jimhardi and haidharo block prints for the skirts of women in…
-
Brilliant Bandhani
Much like the ajrakh block printing which was the subject of my last post, another resist-dyed textile craft of the same area – Kutch in north Gujarat, is bandhani or tie-dye. Like ajrakh its rich pattern and texture gives it the ability to sparkle and entrance the viewer or wearer. The tiny white dots created by meticulously tying thousands of sections of the cloth to resist the rich colours of dye it is then dipped in, create an illusion of stars in the night sky, much like the resist-printed patterns of ajrakh. Worn as odhini (shawl), choli (blouse) and gaghra (skirt) by women in many communities all over Gujarat and…
-
The Ajrakh block printing of Kachchh, India
Against the dull canvas of the Kachchh desert the rich and bold colours of the textiles are strikingly displayed. The millennia old tradition of weaving and dyeing textiles originated in this Indus Valley region in the North West of India, and is still in abundance today. For a typical Kachchhi man or woman, their cloth is an essential everyday commodity and decoration as well as a symbol of their identity. Whether woven, embroidered, printed or tie-dyed, the textiles worn by a person in this area can reveal a multitude of details about their caste, gender, age, religious affiliation, marital status and economic standing. The highly skilled and patterned ajrakh block-printing…
-
The Body Adorned. Textiles, ethnography and London style
The Horniman Museum in South London is named after Victorian tea trader and philanthropist Frederick Horniman who developed a collection of objects and artefacts from all over the world from 1860, with an aim to ‘educate and enrich the lives of the local community’. His collections are from visits to far flung countries such as Egypt, China, Burma and the United States of America, as well as from exhibitions and fairs around Britain. As Horniman’s collection grew, his family relocated and his former house became a museum. As the collection continued to grow, Horniman commissioned the building of the current site for the museum (Horniman website and the museum’s Centenary gallery).…
-
The process of ajrakh block printing according to Ismail Mohammed Khatri, Ajrakhpur
I have discussed the ajrakh block printing of Kutch, India in a few of my blog posts but have not yet written a post containing the details of the process (for details on the general background, read this post). In traditional ajrakh cloths, local artisans and clients could recognise the maker through the appearance of the cloth and process he had used. Each ajrakh artisan uses his own variation on the process. I learnt the process below from the renowned Ismailbhai of Ajrakhpur, who along with his sons Sufiyanbhai and Junaibhai, I am indebted to for their continuing help with my MA research. 1. The cloth is washed in water to…
