Indian textile is (lastly) having its moment

We are on the Kolkata Centre for Creativity the place I’m attempting to sneak an image of a block print of cultural icon Begum Akhtar on a shirt. Its wearer, Mamta Varma, runs Bhairavi’s Chikan in Lucknow, with 300 girls who do positive chikankari embroidery. Noting my curiosity she reveals that the bizarre shirt was made by Meeta Mastani, co-founder of Delhi-based printmakers Bindaas Unlimited, to commemorate the singer’s a hundredth birthday.

A couple of ft away, the inimitable Darshan Mekani Shah, founding father of Kolkata-based not-for-profit Weavers Studio Resource Centre, factors to a gold-and-black cotton sari coated in hand-woven motifs of earrings. “This is a dul [earring in Bengali] jamdani,” she says. “There are only two of them that we know of. One belonged to the late Ruby Ghaznavi [activist and a pioneer in the revival of traditional Bangladeshi jamdani], and here is the other.”

Darshan Mekani Shah

Large ornate paisleys sit resplendent on both nook of the pallu. As a bunch of collectors, historians, curators and journalists peer intently on the sari, Shah continues, “It is of a very high thread count, takes ages to weave, and requires exceptional skill. We have tried to commission another one, but the unavailability of fine yarn and zari, or just the sheer artistry and skill that is slowly disappearing, is making it difficult.”

Shah is the venture director of Textiles of Bengal: A Shared Legacy exhibition. The textile revivalist’s journey started over 34 years in the past when she met Japanese collector Hiroko Iwatate, and began honing her sensibilities in the direction of excessive requirements of supplies, craft and design. In 2020, she set in movement plans for a multi-year in-depth examine of Bengal’s little-documented textile historical past, and this exhibition is its first public expression.

The opening weekend symposium noticed consultants corresponding to British scholar Rosemary Crill, Italian ethnologist Paola Manfredi and creator Pika Ghosh lead talks and walks. “The idea was to gather museum curators, collectors, and textile and art historians on a shared platform to address the many questions about the provenance, history, geo-politics and policies related to the textiles of undivided Bengal and fill in the gaps,” she says.

“These gatherings are as much about celebrating ancient textile traditions as they are about learning from history and taking the conversations forward. Backward and forward integration, respect and recognition, and being true to the narrative and sharing that, is imperative.”Darshan Mekani ShahFounder, Weavers Studio Resource Centre

Curator Mayank Mansingh Kaul, in the meantime, walks 12 of us via the survey exhibition with round 120 artefacts from the seventeenth century to the current — consultant of the completely different traditions of weaving, embroideries, printing, and tie-and-dye. He factors out patron textiles that had been commissioned for royalty, corresponding to a gossamer positive angrakha with the Awadh coat of arms, prayer caps coated in positive chikankari, Haji rumal, an embroidered fabric that weaves collectively spiritual rituals and creative resilience, and complex kantha work.

Mayank Mansingh Kaul

We cease at a size of Dhaka muslin with woven motifs that many collectors of Bengali handloom saris could be accustomed to. The sampler is a recent recreation of motifs corresponding to fulwar (flowers organized in straight rows), kalaka (paisley), tesra (diagonal patterns), and panna hajar (thousand emeralds) that date again lots of of years. A few girls within the group are carrying Dhakais and, to our collective delight, the identical patterns grace their saris. “This is exactly why such survey exhibitions are important,” says Kaul. “Textile practitioners are inspired to reproduce what they see, and a lot of the historical textiles are not accessible to everyone. Most of them are locked up in museum archives or with private collectors.”

Conversations are going mainstream

2025 has solely simply begun, and the Kolkata exhibition is considered one of a number of textile-related occasions occurring throughout India. The final couple of months have seen Sense & Sensibility, a textile gallery on the annual Raw Collaborative in Ahmedabad that narrated design historical past in textiles; the continued Surface in Jodhpur, which highlights embroidery and floor elaborations; TAPI’s When Indian Flowers Bloomed in Distant Lands that tracked commerce textiles throughout 700 years; Pehchaan: Enduring Themes in Indian Textiles at New Delhi’s National Museum, amongst others. March will see textile collector and revivalist Lavina Baldota’s Pampa: Textiles of Karnataka, below the Sutr Santati’s banner, scheduled in historic Hampi, with many others ready to unfold within the subsequent few months.

Sense & Sensibility at Raw Collaborative

Textiles have entered their well-liked period. Even because the business, India’s second largest employment producing sector, is getting authorities help (see field inside), heritage weaves have gotten central to trend manufacturers and the widespread man. No longer are phrases like thread rely and weaving clusters recognisable solely to collectors and retailers; they’re a part of on a regular basis vocabulary. Numerous that is because of exhibitions and initiatives by textile patrons and lovers.

“Exhibitions help create awareness, but the real impact depends on what comes next. While artisans themselves may not always be at these events, the exposure can still lead to meaningful change — whether it’s inspiring designers to work more closely with craft clusters, or encouraging consumers to make more informed choices. These conversations help keep textiles and craftsmanship in the spotlight, which over time can lead to tangible opportunities.”Gaurav GuptaFashion designer

Until not too long ago, any critical dialog about Indian textiles would reference the Vishwakarma collection of exhibitions of the Nineteen Eighties, curated by Martand Singh — as a result of it was simply so distinct. Today, nevertheless, curators corresponding to Kaul, Baldota, and Lekha Poddar (founding father of Devi Art Foundation) are rewriting that script. “This engagement with the weavers and the walkabouts eventually translate into something more mindful for traditional textiles,” says Rasika Wakalkar, one of many delegates on the symposium, and the founding father of TVAM, a not-for-profit that works with the wealthy textile traditions of the Deccan. “There is a direct and indirect influence on the ecosystems being revived and recharged, through such discourses.”

For occasion, in 2023, TVAM and Maharashtra’s Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, had organised Kath Padar – Paithani and Beyond, at Paithan. The historic city — as soon as a bustling hub of commerce, and famend for the paithani sari, with its jewel tones in positive silks — had buzzed with the footfalls of lots of of holiday makers, lots of whom had been weavers seeing historic textiles from state museums and personal collections for the primary time.

Kath Padar

“Fashion in India is still evolving, but every region has its own textile. We have so much room for every state to have exhibitions that speak to their histories, around their identity and textile traditions. If done right, India could have the best textile museums in the world. Symposiums help the textile industry and play a very big role in the textile economy and the scale of production.”Sanjay GargDesigner and founder, Raw Mango

Exhibitions encourage innovation

Generating new audiences is without doubt one of the fundamental aims of those initiatives, states Kaul, who has curated 20 main textile-related exhibitions previously decade, together with Kath Padar. “In India, almost everybody has a visceral connection to textiles. For every Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata, there are now exhibitions in tier-two cities such as Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, to even smaller towns such as Chirala in Andhra Pradesh, Anegundi in Karnataka, and Paithan in Maharashtra.”

He can also be seeing an exponential rise in engagement at these numerous occasions. “Exhibitions inspire innovation, which is not possible without looking at history. There is no other country in the world that has this kind of diversity in textiles, historical material and contemporary practice. And these initiatives are opportunities to build standards of excellence and awareness.”

Ahalya Matthan, a textile patron and founding father of The Registry of Sarees, a analysis and examine centre primarily based in Bengaluru specialising in handspun and hand woven textiles, is of the identical accord. Back in 2015, her initiative #100sareespact had kickstarted curiosity on social media. People used the hashtag to share images of themselves carrying saris on Instagram and Twitter, and to speak about their love of the weaves. Later, in 2018 and 2022, her exhibitions, together with Meanings, Metaphors in Bengaluru, Coimbatore and Chirala, and Red Lilies, Water Birds at Anegundi, each curated by Kaul, had been revelatory.

Ahalya Matthan (far left) along with her staff

“In Chirala [2018], the venue was an 8×20 ft classroom in a government boys school, with walls covered in fungus. We painted them white, put beige chatais on the floor, and showed three textiles each day over nine days,” she remembers. “I will never forget what Surya Babu, a weaver from Srikakulam, wrote in the visitors’ book. ‘Until I came here, I felt like a labourer. Now I feel like an artist,’ he wrote in Telugu. The simple act of displaying plain hand spun, hand woven lengths of textile somehow gave the weaver dignity. The impact of such exhibitions, especially in smaller centres, is immeasurable.”

Matthan remembers a weaver from Benaras who studied a Venkatagiri sari at size at ‘Red Lilies…’. He spoke about how he wouldn’t have the ability to reproduce the weave in Benares, because the Venkatagiri vocabulary is completely different. “But he found a zari we were looking for and helped us set up a loom at Venkatagiri, where he and a local weaver were able to reproduce that sari. I call this exchange of pehchaan and expertise,” she provides.

Red Lilies, Water Birds
| Photo Credit:
Pallon Daruwala

Artisan within the image

While the price of organising textile exhibitions might be fairly excessive, as curator and textile revivalist Baldota places it, “It is nothing compared to the price we will pay if nothing is done. No amount of money will bring back the craftsmanship and skill that will disappear in the next five years if we ignore it.”

Lavina Baldota
| Photo Credit:
Frozen Pixel Studios

Baldota’s Sutr Santati is an try and broaden the scope of textile exhibitions from being restricted to patrons and the elite to turn into, as an alternative, a repository of information for everybody. The revivalist, whose household belief, Abheraj Baldota Foundation, works with weaving clusters close to Hampi, has taken the exhibitions to Delhi, Mumbai and Melbourne, Australia. And now, with Pampa, she is bringing business tastemakers nearer to the supply, all the best way to Hampi. “Textile has become a favourite medium for art, even internationally. With Pampa, Textiles of Karnataka, I wanted to bring attention to Karnataka’s rich handloom tradition. Exhibitions such as these are not only about looking back at history, it is also about looking forward and creating new work,” she says.

Sutr Santati

“The peak of this interest in textiles — not just in the design industry but also in scholarship — is what we are experiencing now, blurring the lines between craft and art”Yash SanhotraCurator and researcher, MAP

On the flip aspect, nevertheless, handloom revivalist Uzramma states that almost all symposiums on textiles are directed at outsiders. “In my experience, there is a greater need for organising symposiums and conferences amongst handloom artisans, many of whom have been carrying out extensive research and experiments in cotton farming, decentralised modes of spinning, natural dyes and dyeing processes, and textile designing.” In this regard, her Malkha venture — which goals to hyperlink farmers, spinners, and weavers to one another in order that they turn into a neighborhood of producers — has been “unweaving its role as an NGO, to weave instead a Handloom Knowledge Commons where artisan scholars are invited to share their knowledge”. 

400 million contributors

Back in Kolkata, Varma and I are discussing the 300 girls embroiderers at Bhairavi’s Chikan. A sizeable quantity for positive, however as professor Ashoke Chatterjee, former director of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, informs me, it’s only a tiny fraction of the artisans in India. “Though there is no official data on how many artisans there are, I would peg it at nearly 400 million. No other industry can match the contribution that artisans and crafts can and do make to the Sustainable Development Goals [the 2030 agenda adopted by all United Nations members in 2015 as a shared blueprint for prosperity],” he shares.

Textiles from Bengal: A Shared Legacy

Chatterjee has labored with the Indian authorities on the economics of the nation’s craft sector, and was the honorary president of the Crafts Council of India (CCI) for over 20 years. He calls the overall apathy proven in the direction of craftspeople a disaster of ignorance. Nevertheless, he holds out hope. “Scholarly symposiums are vital. The conversations there will give rise to a sensitive understanding of the sector and highlight issues of social, political, spiritual and environmental justice, and equity,” he believes.

“Exhibitions have great reach. And social media has improved the livelihoods of many artisans. Global and local communities are directly connecting through social media with the creators, eliminating the need of middlemen.”Pankaja SethiTextile researcher

Textiles are intently interwoven into our tradition. From patrons prepared to spend lakhs of rupees to fee a heritage sari to center class households who maintain pricey that one extravagant wedding ceremony ensemble that’s been handed down via the generations, textiles will at all times be related in India.

It’s additionally why Darshan Shah shouldn’t be fazed by the doom and gloom narratives of disappearing craftsmanship. “The many events around textiles planned for the months and years ahead will inspire change. Because the art and craft sector in India is resilient. It has survived for thousands of years and will live on long after you and I are gone.”

With inputs from Team Magazine.

The Textiles of Bengal exhibition is on until March 31 on the Kolkata Centre for Creativity.

The author is a contract journalist primarily based in Coimbatore.