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 –…
-
-
The 2015 Design Graduates from Kutch
Today is the last day of the 2015 Design batch of Somaiya Kala Vidya (SKV)’s exhibition at Artisans’ gallery, Mumbai. I attended the final class – Presentation and Merchandising, as part of my PhD fieldwork. There were eleven students on the course, four weavers, four ajrakh artisans and three bandhani artisans. Before this class, students had attended Colour, Basic Design, Marketing, Concept and Communication and Finishing and Collection Development. Each class lasts two weeks and they are spread over a year. During the weeks in between each, the students develop work at home based on what they have learned in the previous class. In Presentation and Merchandising, the students learned to display their…
-
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…
