Feature Image: Drawloom for patterned silk velvet, Rahul Jain’s workshop, Varanasi, 2015. Photo courtesy Textile Art of India, New Delhi ‘I describe my work as a continuation of a heritage, a legacy, that is 2,000 years old’ (Rahul Jain, personal communication, June 2016) I had known about Rahul Jain’s work for a while, read some of his huge range of extensively researched books on Indian, Iranian and Turkish textiles, desperately trying to understand the complex weaves they document, and had heard about his inspiring work reviving ancient weaving techniques in Varanasi. An interview with the weaving connoisseur published by Live Mint revealed some of his views on craftsmanship and crafts in India,…
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Textiles in Depth: Handloom Weaving in India, Part one
I have just returned from a month long trip to India, three and a half years after my last trip. After a few days of settling into a very different time zone, climate and pace of life, I soon felt quite at home, the places and people I visited seeming as familiar as if I’d seen them only a few weeks before. A busy schedule and little access to the internet meant I couldn’t blog about the trip as I went, so this is the start of a series of blog posts in which I will write about my encounters with various textile artisans – this time mainly weavers, as…
