Journal Archive

Sharadaji’s fascination with design probably began as a youth surrounded by the crafts of Mysore. Yet his command of design flowered most when as a journalist and editor, he developed an unfailing eye for design that could intelligently convey the word into the mind. Design for Sharadaji was the sanctity of detail. Words, images and letters carefully chosen and laid out, the avoidance of clutter and fuss --- all this came naturally to him. Indeed, the absence of clutter and fuss was the mark of this extraordinarily ordinary man. So ordinary that even his sons addressed him as Shouri, something I could never bring myself to do in the 40 years or more that I have lived in awe of Sharadaji’s extra-ordinariness. The idea that less is usually more was not just a design fundamental that Sharadaji instinctively understood. It was the life he lived, and the bond he shared with perhaps the greatest design team of the twentieth century, the late Charles and Ray Eames of Los Angeles, the founding spirits of India’s National Institute of Design. Sharadiji was among the first to meet the Eames couple when they arrived in New Delhi fifty years ago on an official invitation to survey the situation of small industries, following the First Five Year Plan. They were to advise on what industrial design might do to assist the sector. Sharadaji later wrote that Jawaharlal Nehru was attracted to Charles Eames in the way he had been attracted to Le Corbusier. Yet the Eames’ India Report, now a classic of world design literature, baffled the Minister of Commerce & Industry. He had expected a feasibility plan. What he got was a reflection on the meaning of quality within Indian tradition, on the cultural and economic decisions that India may need to make in its transition to modernity, and an essay on the lota as the finest example of what design was really all about. The India Report, which led to the founding of NID as the first design institution anywhere in the developing world, may have been quietly shelved in the best New Delhi tradition were it not for the few that understood and were stimulated by it. Among them was Sharadaji. Years later his column in The Asian Age Sharadaji would recall that encounter, describing Charles Eames as the “visual lyricist of everyday things” with “answers to those who think that beauty and function are separate”. That lyricism would be a bond that strengthened when Charles and Sharadaji worked together in 1963 with NID’s fledgling team to create Jawaharlal Nehru & His India, a biographical exhibition that toured the world and changed the idiom of exhibition design forever. It was this effort that first brought me in contact with Sharadaji, although I had known of him through our family connections in Bangalore. I had left India to take on a career in Washington DC. Nirmaljit Singh, a dear friend I shared with Sharadaji and Kamalamma, was our man in New York City. The exhibition had created a sensation when it opened there in 1964. The next year it moved to the Smithsonian in Washington, and I was one of several local expats roped in to assist Eames and the exhibition team. My meeting with the Eames would also be a first encounter with the idea of NID, setting off a fateful chain of events that ten years later would take me to Ahmedabad and to 25 years of service at the Institute. One of the first questions Charles asked me was “Do you know Sharada Prasad? The guy’s a genius, a quiet genius”. It was a description I have recalled many times. Some years later, I returned to India at the urging of Romesh Thapar to participate in a wonderfully doomed adventure at the ITDC: an attempt to professionalise the public sector through an experiment in tourism. It was Romesh’s idea, encouraged by Indira Gandhi. Sharadaji suggested that the gamble was worth my taking, and not just because his boss had encouraged the idea. The Corporation had a design policy. It would use design in ways that could create an Indian image capable of withstanding what was already the most competitive industry in the world. But then as now, India was like that only. Sharadaji was witness as bureaucrats and entrepreneurs ganged up to ensure that professionals were frustrated and ultimately discarded like squeezed lemons. But not before the ITDC had made lasting demonstrations, transforming the industry and setting new standards of Indian design, just as Air-India had done in that glorious time with JRD before Ministries kissed its quality to death. In those tumultuous Delhi years, Sharadaji was for me an oasis, a sustaining source of reference, wisdom and hope. I came to know Kamalamma and their sons Sanjeeva and Ravi, and to enter the lives of this sometimes exasperatingly simple family that floated like lilies above the muck of Delhi’s obsession with power and blood. I learned too, as I am sure his family and other friends had, that Sharadaji was incapable of even the smallest act of nepotism. You never went to him for official favours. His way was to point away from petty concerns to larger opportunities. Encouraging every innovation in design that I would bring to him, he was intolerant of excess or of hype. Like his friend Charles Eames, he demanded focus on a central concept, and on an ability to express it as either product or system relevant to an Indian environment. It was in these years that I understood the depth of his knowledge and love of his country and his wonderful hold on the very idea of India. Sharadaji had encouraged us to involve NID in the tasks of tourism infrastructure. This offered insight into the importance of what was happening in that corner of Ahmedabad. Not just that a significant profession was being ushered into India, but much more than that: a system of higher education was being introduced in which learning was by doing, not by accumulating pass marks or exam certificates. By 1973 a severe crisis in leadership had caused the National Institute of Design to flounder. Some even suggested that the experiment be wound up. Design still meant little to most. NID’s first graduates had not yet emerged, and the very notion that they would do so with a portfolio of professional work rather than a mark-sheet had already enraged the Ministry of Education. Sharadaji, Pupul Jayakar, Romesh Thapar and Gerson Da Cunha worked tirelessly to ensure that NID not only survive but that its experiment in education be reinforced. That needed a new Director. Romesh and Sharadaji called me to meet Pupul, who had stepped in as NID’s Chair. With Sharadaji and Romesh at her side, Pupul asked me to take over. They put me on the line to Prof Ravi Matthai. He had already volunteered to keep the NID team together through the storm, having just stepped down as IIMA Director to commence an equally bold experiment in education in the deserts of Rajasthan. Despite dire predictions from all sides, the quality of this team made their appeal irresistible. I left for Ahmedabad the morning after the Emergency was declared. Through all the 25 years I was to serve NID, Sharadaji was an unwavering support and inspiration --- and not only through his sensitivity to education processes, to design, or the cultural resources and networks of talent at his command. He was as interested in improving a machine tool as he was in our work on crafts or typefaces. No need of a student or teacher was too small for his attention, no management puzzle too distracting for his time and thought. The generosity with which he shared his knowledge and friendship ensured that I had the support of the entire NID community when I invited Sharadaji to be NID’s Chair. That was a fitting destination for a relationship with the Institute that had begun in its studios as he and Eames, and for a time Indira Gandhi, had worked together with the NID community to create that historic tribute to Jawaharlal Nehru. Incapable of talking down or acting the VIP, Sharadaji was approachable to all. His most ardent fans on the campus included our driver and housekeeper. When in the ‘nineties India’s design boom brought prosperity and opportunities unimagined twenty years earlier, Sharadaji shared my concern as the term ‘designer’ moved swiftly from noun to adjective, and notions of fashion overwhelmed those of responsibility and service. Yet we both knew that there were many Indias, and each had its legitimate design needs. Our dialogue on this challenge has lasted, influencing whatever I was still do after NID was left behind me. Let me end on a personal note. During his time as NID’s Chairman, Sharadaji and Kamalamma met with a hideous car accident while returning to the campus from Modera. There was a long, enforced convalescence in Ahmedabad, and for Kamalamma years of suffering. In all that time, there was never a demand from either one of them, only words of thanks and concern for those they felt they had inconvenienced. Concern again, much earlier when in Ahmedabad I found myself a bachelor father, a single parent in circumstances almost as extraordinary as the original journey to NID. Sharadaji and Kamalamma were among the few who at once welcomed my little son Keshav as family. Their affection protected and strengthened him in ways that both he and I would fully understand much later. When Keshav became a father, he and his wife Prativa insisted that we journey to Delhi so that little Kabir could have the blessing of Sharadaji and Kamala. I don’t think I ever got around to thanking Sharadaji in those early years. I hope I can do so now, through Kamala. Sharadaji has left us. In the words he used to mourn Malikarjun Mansur’s passing, the river has gone back into the mountain. As in design so in life, less was more for Sharadaji. He made minimal demands on society or on nature, concerned more with replenishment than extraction. This is the ethic for design in the 21^st century, and Sharadaji lived it. If his footprint was light, Sharadji’s conviction was strong that design is ultimately about caring. That is how his friend Charles Eames once described the profession. Sharadaji loved Eames’ unforgettable lines on the lota as India’s symbol of dignity, service and love --- all the qualities that finally distinguish great design. As well as great lives, like the one we honour today. 25 September, 2008


Just as I had unwound myself in an effort to write about a quaint adivaasi village, Baliapal in Orissa I seem to go into a reverse mode from the present to the day it all began, my tryst with Baliapal….
Just as much as it seemed a struggle to tell this story a few years ago, it seems to come so naturally now that I have trodden this path, and felt at home, welcomed into the open arms of Subal Patra and his family. Subal Kumar Patra died on Oct 18, 2008, at Cuttack Hospital. I will always remember him as a simple common man, who led a simple hard life with a simple aim, to keep all around him happy.
Fondly known as Patra Babu, he is survivied by his wife, Aarti Patra, his sons, Rajesh, Rakesh and daughters, Nirupama, Anupama and Upama, and a few cats, dogs and a cow. I first met Subal and Arti Patra at Dilli Haat, in Delhi, almost 6 years ago, where they were trying to sell bags made of woven sabaii grass. From then on it has been a long journey for the Patras, mostly uphill, which is always tiresome and with many hurdles. No awards, no medals, he was a simple man, trying to make his ends meet, while touching others lives. Patra Babu was a self-taught and a self made man, who kept his humor in all times, good or bad. His spirit of life was a part of his work as well. Keeping everyone happy with his offside jokes, the great culinary skills that he learnt over years, and forever lending hand to help others. The seed of the organization, RAHAA, sowed by Subal Patra, is now being nurtured by his daughter, Nirupama and son, Rajesh, who are doing their best to make his dreams come true, under the guidance of their mother. They are trying to weave his dreams into reality, by the sabaii grass woven products that they continue to make in their village. What Patra Babu has left for his fellow beings in his village will hopefully lend meaning into the rest of their lives.

Craft Journeys -Time Travel Sunny Introduces the Series The circle begins at the centre. Or does it? Do we already have the circle and find the centre and by then the circle has expanded, shifted and there is a new centre. Craft. Handmade. Tradition. Culture. Weavers. Printers. Potters. Jewelers. Millions of artisans, thousands of skills. Where does one begin? Since it's a personal journey our beginning could be anywhere. We may begin a thousand years ago at the dawn of civilization, at the birth of the nation in 1947, renewed interest through hippie led dharma fashion 1970's, the promotional and potpourri Festivals of India in the 1980's or economic and social liberalisation in the 1990's.

I, an IIT drop-out, Hindu Eco.(Hons) DU, came to craft through my college sweetheart who joined Dastkar in 1989.It was before the time NGO's were well funded, she started with a salary early four figures, nowadays a normal lunch for two at a decent nightclub. There was Moradabad brass. There were decrepit Khadi stores. There was Anokhi and Fabindia. I want to tell a story like the tree. Its many roots, many branches, but we share the trunk. The employment generation angle, less energy intensive, low capital outlay is common to most, a certain aesthetic vision of the universe, natural work rhythms and cooperative capitalism common to some, a glamorous high fashion to few. Craft spans more systems of production than any other, from tribal artisans to village specialization castes to semi industrial craft pockets, to designer and export led factories and workshops. I want to and will over the coming months take you through the whole tropical forest of this amazing sector. As someone coming from an energetic Punjabi business background the entrepreneurial energy of this sector has amazed me. The production processes since millennia, the complex skill sets, the resource chains, the marketing networks are "jugaadu" (makeshift, innovative) and always transforming taking account of larger economic and social trends. I will attempt a politics, a sociology, a mini history, a fiction, from notes, letters, e-mails, pamphlets collected through years from dozens of participants including activists, NGO's, boutique stores, designers and interest groups. As I write this I write to friends to send in incidents, inspirations, thoughts-to share so we can all begin to learn the common story we have woven together. It's amorphous, with no clear trends, many openings, hopeless dead ends, new beginnings. There is no large theory for it; the Marxists considered craft feudal - in Ukraine weavers hid their looms and wove secretly for weddings; the modernists consider them quaint, to be patronized, and at best organized into factory sheds that like China can manufacture any craft, rootless, without flavor. Unlike here where the pani (mineral composition of water and its overall quality ) decides the tonal colour of the natural dye, the bright red of the Narmada in Bagh, the indigo blue of Balotra, the ajrakh of Barmer lake. So this story will meander and be funny at times, sad at times, highly intellectual or highly folksy at times. For it's a story of people trying to live lives in interesting ways in interesting times. People trying to combine hand, heart and mind with imagination, a sense of justice and pizzaz. Many unknown some known, but all trying ..... "hazaaron khwaishen aisi, ki har khwaish pe dum nikle" In August: The Story of the Vanishing Ghaghra

Thoughts on The Vanishing Ghaghra

All the women of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan wore the ghaghra till the early 20^th century. The farming castes and nomadic tribes of Rajasthan continue to wear them today. Made from 24" wide triangles of khadi fabric, ghaghras were famous for the number of triangles orkalis (folds). A husband's love for his wife was measured by the number of kalis in a woman's ghaghra. The entire outfit comprised the ghaghra, choli (blouse) and the lugdi (dupatta).

There was a whole sociology of colour and prints which functioned within an implicit understanding that fabrics too can be a language identifying a persons, community, caste, occupation and marital and religious status. Certain castes like the Jats wore indigo or "darker" colours while Rajputs wore sunhera (bright) colours like oranges and yellows. Sunhera colours were less, pucca (fast) as upper caste could get the Rangrez (dyer) to keep freshly re-dyeing their ghaghras with fresh flower smells of "tesu". This re-dyeing was a status symbol, the farmer castes wore blue as that was fast color and men usually bought their women one ghaghra per year. There used to be a saafa or head scarf of long yardages which men wore as turban. The most exotic was Maliagiri in whose dyeing more than twenty ingredients were used including attar or naturally condensed perfumes. We tried to recreate the maliagiri and still have a small sample that holds perfume even after 10 years. The old neelgar who did it is no more so the secret died with him and the knowledge now extinct. As with most systems of traditional knowledge the tasks are divided amongst communities, the Rangrez are the dyers (though there is a separate lower caste which dyes indigo called Neelgars) and the Chippas hand-block print the fabric in central Rajasthan in the region around Jaipur. There is no strict division between labour and religious leaning though the caste and its corresponding occupation is very strict. For instance the printers in Balotra are Muslim Chippas, in Barmer Hindu Khatris, in Kutch they are Muslim Khatris who are famous for their "bandhej" (tie dye) and in Western Madhya Pradesh they are Muslim Khatri engaged in Chippa work. So the complex interaction between Muslims and Hindus produced the ghaghras worn even by tribal Bhils of Udaipur till this day. The Chippas used to print the fabric for the ghaghras for the tribals and nomads but their markets have slowly vanished. Why? One of the main reasons was the adoption by the Bengali and UP upper caste women of the Sari which became identified with Mother India and was adopted as the national dress. It was more becoming of the resurgent Indian identity than the sashaying ghaghra of various lengths, the "banjara" nomad women wearing knee length to much lower lengths worn by women of the upper caste. Slowly the Ahmedabad mills copied the prints on wide 45" fabrics and then unto saris, soon upper caste women stopped wearing ghaghras. The Jat and Ahir women still wear them as they are much easier to do manual and farm work in and one does not need a separate petticoat. Till today you see women in rural Rajasthan roaming in petticoats as faux-ghaghras with a dupatta as their ghaghra wearing days are still fresh in their memories. Jasleen Dhamija told us that in the 1950's when they went to find saris, no one printed them. The Chippas used low small tables and printed while sitting on the ground. For saris you needed a 4 feet broad table and high so you could print it standing, and also 6 meter long to lay a sari on it. The printers we work with say such tables became popular in the 70's with the hippie rush for exports. Ravi Shankar and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi along with Beatles made Sanganer, 35 kms from Jaipur, a popular destination.The small print bootis (floral motif) of ghaghras became the sari prints on the body and the big blocks of the "lugdis" became part of "Pallu" designs. So the Ghaghra was vanquished by the monopolization of the Sari as the preferred civilized garment. This is a story culled from conversations and probably would need lots of ground level research to be documented with facts of how such cultural and fashion transitions take place. We need a lot of work to understand the dynamism of tradition and the long tradition of innovation in our craft sector.

Chippas - from block printers to entrepreneurs

The printing caste known as Chippas is spread in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab (where they are known as Chimbas). Many of them are still pursuing their traditional occupations and there are many among them who are exporters, entrepreneurs and millionaires. When we started working with the Chippa community in the early 90's, they had known the second boom of exports which was then leveling off. Recognizing the importance and value of textile printing by hand, in the 80's a hand printing institute was set up in Jaipur to research, develop and nurture block printing traditions. Traditionally Chippas were block printers using small blocks (3"by 3") printing fabric for ghaghras and odhnis. They worked with other related castes of Neelgars (indigo dyers), Rangrez (tie-dyers),Dhobis (washermen).The printing was done using the traditional mordants of alum and iron and were famous as Sanganeri and Bagru prints. The colour palette was of red black with mud resist dyes of blue, green and yellow. The bleaching after the process of printing was done next to rivers or lakes with water being sprinkled on the fabric under the fierce Rajasthani sun, known as sun bleaching. The whole process largely used wastes and was eco-friendly. For centuries these colours and print combinations had worked as each caste wore their colours like a flag and certain prints were essential for weddings and other functions through the year. With the coming of the sari and 45 inch or broad width cloth the small sit down tables had to evolve to standing up tables 22feet long, along with a whole new aesthetic of pallu, body, border using the old ghaghra bootis as all over body prints and odhni big bootis as pallu layouts. In the 60's the hippie era led to large orders of fabric to be made into clothes, scarves and t-shirts. Our conversations with older Chippas led to interesting discoveries. There was always regional and global trade among their caste. We met Chippas who had traveled to Afghanistan to buy "manjishtha", the creepers which gave the best reds, "Anaar Chilca" (pomegranate skin) came from the lower Himalayas, "harda" from Madhya Pradesh and Western Ghat forests. Indigo meanwhile was grown in Rajasthan. Pre- independence, printers used to go to Ahemdabad and print "Saudagiri" (meaning to trade, or to barter) prints which were exported to Burma. We ourselves have seen block printed panels in the Royal Palace of Bangkok imported from Rajasthan! With great pride we were informed of the time when the Chippa printers earned a wage as much as a police constable. The Khatris and Chippas of Barmer and Dhamadka, Kutch print a fabric called Ajrakh, using "multani mitti" as a resist with red and indigo dyes. It was traditionally (still many wear it) a "lungi" for Muslim males and a variety is printed exactly on both sides of the fabric, so there is no reverse side of fabric and no risk that you have worn it wrong side up in the darkness in the village. Lots of Ajrakh was smuggled to the Pakistani side till the fencing of the international boundaries began. They still smuggle it and that is the reason you do not get to see much of it in metros and local stores. Talk about local markets!! Chippas have taken to huge volumes in export by shifting to screen printing which is also considered hand printing as no machine is used. Most fabric available in local markets now is not hand block printed as the labour work charges are 3-4 times higher for block printing as compared to screen printing. To pass off as block some errors are consciously incorporated in the screen. Many pass off as natural dye by dyeing the base in "harda" which is the cheapest dye and overdye in chemical dyes, so it will test positive for vegetal matter. There are a dozen crorepati (millionaire) families among the Chippas of Jaipur district and recently one of them has opened a store called "CHIPPA" in upmarket Greater Kailash M block market in New Delhi in a 2000 sq. feet basement. This Chippa is a major supplier even to Fab India, so its interesting to see what established brands will do on competition from artisan entrepreneurs. This story is to share autonomous enterprise by the artisan community. We have worked over a dozen years now and seen closely how caste networks work and support each other during large export orders and big exhibitions by sharing the workload and giving stock on consignment. Till today no non-artisan enterprise has been able to produce hand printed mud resist fabrics at prices these artisans produce. Till today old brands like Anokhi have finishing units not fabric producing ones, though today there are many bigger exporters of block printed items than Anokhi, almost all traders and fabricators. Though till today no one has put in design the way Anokhi has, the rest depend on artisans to create new ranges year after year. These Chippas were hit by the ban on Azo dyes passed by the European Union in 2003¹. Many units had to shut down. A continuous engagement is needed with new generation dyeing and finishing techniques for hand printing to flourish again. If industry is supported by huge research budgets even artisans need continuous innovation in design, processes and new colour palettes. We have always believed that one needs to build on skills available rather than repeat hundreds of block printing workshops which the Government does, are about teaching these communities to print, its like teaching a halwai to make mithai. One has to use parts of processes and combine mud-resist, tie-dye and Khari (gold and silver dust printing) to create new levels of effects. New block designs and layouts every season are the kinds of inputs needed. We and many others stores and boutiques have started doing this on their own, but still dyeing and finishing support is needed by technically qualified personnel. This is the space the state and research institutions can fill, increase the palette of colours and uniformity of colour in bucket dyeing. Instead of blaming a process as retrograde one needs research which is craft based and specific to centuries old processes ,as this and many other crafts are not only eco friendly but employment friendly too.

In simple words, this means that from September 2003 all EU countries are required to prohibit the manufacture and sale of those defined consumer goods, which on chemical analysis are found to contain listed aromatic amines originating from a small number of azo dyes.

Artisanal Production -The Third Millennium

With huge hurricanes of globalised capitalism hitting most of the worlds geographical regions its time we looked at artisanal production from the viewpoint of future relevance, mechanisation, markets, employment. To look at artisanal activity as a major social and economic force in developing countries and look at it with the widest structural vision to be able to do a comprehensive analysis of its strengths and weaknesses. To be able to emerge from classic debates of revival versus innovation , functionality versus aesthetic and cultural production, niche versus mass markets. I have always felt the beginning should be made by studying how artisanal communities have adapted to modern industrial practices, how they have reinvented or reskilled themselves. The intervention by state, cultural elites and civil society are peripheral at best, working mostly with the beautiful and the decorative rather than the mass of artisans. India has millions of weavers, potters, carpenters, masons, wood and stone carvers, metalworkers. Who has studied the transition of Ramgharia lohars, a sikh community who made a smooth transition in the city of Ludhiana where all the biggies of cycle industry like Atlas and Hero began, and now Hero Honda is the largest producer of motorbikes in the world. The Ramgharia lohars created copies of highly expensive western machinery and innovated small machines appropriate to our capital scarce economies. They are not engineers trained in IITs but without them most of the North Indian maintenance and machine building operations would grind to a halt. Where has any management institution studied Artisan Entrepreneurs who have become highly successful exporters like the ones at Moradabad, Benares, Sanganer. I have heard many stories from friends in buying houses of poor artisans who now head multi million turnover casting and finishing units of stainless steel tableware to garden accessories. Why has not the "mind" of this country studied the "hand" of this country? Its Brahmanical caste system is at work here, that is why we love desk jobs like outsourced talking but not manufacturing which provides employment to the not English educated which is the huge majority. We have to study the processes as they evolve, craft evolving into industry - screen printing being sold as block print and accepted as such as no machine is involved, it remains a hand process all the same. In hand printing the coming in of tables and printing while standing marks the evolution of processes to increase production. The Organised labour left has done a few paltry studies on the status of artisans as unorganised workers, how their wages have changed their financial status. Our experience in Kaladera shows that a majority of artisans feel they never had it so good, work and orders were always cyclical. Ever since the grandfathers remember they had to work on farms as labor and few had the money to buy so much fabric or goods, one ghaghra used to last a year. They told us ghee was Re.1/- a kilogram but no one had that rupee, today its 150/- a kg and you can find some in every home. This experience will be varied, as lots of artisans shifted careers, leaving the ones left with better opportunities when demand picked up again. We talk of globalisation as a new wave but pre-nineteenth century there was no nation, so many influences came from all over. Kalamkari itself is a Persian influence and block printing could be Central Asia. We have no maps of how craft has moved across regions how new skills have been learnt. In Barmer Ajrakh is smuggled into Pakistan in huge quantities, as it is cheaper and lower quality in India, there they make "Taj Mahals" as a Khatri told me, so they do not need the urban market so desperately. The point one is making is that there have been sustained and successful artisans all over India, despite the state and despite the craft(y) intelligentsia, so we need to look at them and see how indigenous networks thrived and why and how of such instances. We have to stop getting squeamish about caste and look at Craft as Caste. Most artisans are Mandal castes, how they have maintained caste purity, work secrets, or in times of demand trained outsiders to learn their craft. In India we do not study the reality on the ground we map our westernised notions on traditional formats rather than understanding how knowledge and transmission networks have worked since centuries and build on them, complement them. Design intervention institutes need to be situated in craft pockets rather than in cities. NIFT in metros flourish while the singular National Institute of Craft set up in Jaipur has problems sustaining faculty and students. Do we have an adequate understanding of how other countries have tackled their craft skills? In China they have actively encouraged multiple skills. An importer told me about how he met a Pakistani trader who goes pre-Id to China to get crochet caps made in millions by hand. The Chinese have developed intricate systems of having thousands of women in groups living in large geographical spreads and ways of getting designs to them and getting production in time. Even in India I personally know of a Saurashtrian businessman who supplies embroidered hand printed suits to Shoppers Stop and has hundreds of women taking work from his mother's home, while his wife gets suits stitched in Baroda and he roams around sourcing fabrics from Rajasthan to Orissa. This takes me to the main point - The Third Milleneum Craft, how will it thrive(not just survive!).The points below are just a cursory look at mainstream markets which we tend to overlook while talking about craft in craft circles!

Big Retail - how to link supermarkets to craft. Thailand has enforced design and marketing support for rural products on Multinational chains.
Exports - Buying houses, what are they doing to craft, in combination with latest finishing processes
Marriage Market - designer weddings, one knows of entrepreneurs and producers who design mithai boxes, from tabla look-alikes to glass and metal to paper, costing more than the mithai.
Religion Market - the temples, the puja crafts, home temples
Architecture-the Rajasthani jaalis, the potters, the stone sculptors
How does the small boutique store fit in all this, what are their needs, is anyone thinking of wholesaling, of creating the fair trade intermediary. There is a network of thousands of family/wife/single person run stores and many waiting to open. Look at direct marketing like Amway! Dastkar Andhra tried it with handloom fabrics-"One Room Revolution" I call it. Craft development has to get into market expansion -warehousing/ quality control/ direct marketing/ craft venture development is where future of craft organisations lie.
The crafts are humane forms of production, an alternative to industrial manufacture. Work is done close to home which helps maintain ecological harmony by using less natural resources wastefully. Rs. 3000/- in a village is equivalent to 5000/- in a city if not more created on a base of minimal infrastructure. But electricity and phone are today necessary for trade orders.

This essay is just to outline how large the scale of work before us is and how widespread are artisans themselves. If understood and managed well artisanal work will not only be the second largest employer outside agriculture but a dynamic and innovative one with better incomes for the practitioners. Also there is a huge space for all kinds of entrepreneurship available to young designers and marketing professionals

FROM LOOMS TO THE FIELDS

An upper middle class Hyderabadi woman, married very young with no university degree. Later as her two kids are grown to their twenties, she learns to be an interior decorator, jewelry maker and lithograph collector. In her mid-forties in 1989 when most women from similar backgrounds are agonizing over menopause she reinvents herself. Completely self-taught, traveling from hi-society parties, when few knew about such lifestyles courtesy page3, she shifted to second class train travel to dusty villages in Andhra, reviving and researching natural dyeing techniques, iron making, wood turning and lacquering and many other crafts. Uzramma, the founder of Dastkar Andhra (estd.1995) recently passed the mantle to a young team of women, to take their work into newer ways of design, marketing and public policy advocacy for the Andhra weavers and artisans. Dastkar Andhra does not just deal with natural dyes, but have created a movement of it. From Kerala to Uttaranchal, from Orissa to Rajasthan, there are weavers, embroiderers and printers who have attended workshops. But that in itself was not enough for DA (Dastkar Andhra) and Uzramma. She encouraged students from the IIT's (Indian Institute of Technology) and IIM's (Indian Institute of Management) to go to the roots of dye sources and the fibre of fabric - cotton species. They learnt as they went along, among other things that our vision of creating a local product for local markets would take a life-time of work. Between them over the years they learnt the practical skills and 'domain knowledge' of household cotton textile production. Over the years Dastkar Andhra has become a leader in the teaching of natural dyeing skills to artisans, and provides capacity building and training services to the handloom industry in management, marketing, design, production management and chemical dyeing. Dastkar Andhra and its volunteers researched from agricultural notebooks written by pioneering British botanists and agricultural scientists from early 19th century, they collaborated with scientists from cotton research stations in small towns across Andhra, they wrote what they discovered, which was the whole history of colonization of processes, which affect our cotton growing and processing to this day. How traditionally cotton fibre was naturally twisted and healthy from indigenous species which were hardy. The British imported Caribbean species which were long stapled rather than research and propagate Indian long staples, and by the process of packaging into bales and exporting the cotton destroyed its natural twist needing huge machinery to recreate the natural twist but leaving the fibre weak. The traditional khadi woven at the sites close to the growing areas was naturally strong, less energy intensive, more employment friendly. So today cotton needs the maximum pesticide sprayings of any cash crop, making it resource intensive, leading to huge financial losses for farmers if crops fail leading to farmer suicides. Traditional small stapled cotton grows intercropped with other crops in many tribal areas without such problems, but in 1993 Gujarat wanted to ban such ecologically humane agriculture as the short staple cotton led to breakages in spinning factories. If spinning is done on ambar charkhas no such problems result, the high tension on the fibre in highly mechanized units leads to such breakages. You can see that therefore links for humane technology which pays attention to ecology and employment to be maintained, one needs to look at the whole cycle from natural resource utilization to all intermediate and finishing processes. If processes were to be built around sustainable cropping, we would create appropriate technology in ginning, spinning close to the growing centres rather than try to force nature to sustain factories which destroy our natural resource base. Research would focus on indigenous long stapled crops. DA works on all of the above, and is going to start a project of transferring its appropriate technology of ginning, carding and spinning to weaver and cotton farmer communities. They even started indigo farming and set up traditional indigo vats. They have set up a design unit to regularly develop new color palettes and patterns for Andhra weaver cooperatives and prints for Machilipattanam. They worked on natural dyeing of wool and designing carpets in Eluru. They incorporated natural dyes into lac for Etikopakka wooden toys, which was such a successful enterprise that they regularly sell out on first day of most exhibitions and do large export orders. DA has introduced direct selling concepts of encouraging housewives to directly sell saris, suit pieces and fabrics from weavers to neighbourhoods, to spread the culture of reasonably priced handloom. Uzramma has a theory of craft as a world view which harmonises nature, production processes and aesthetic impulse to lead to a more emotionally and spiritually satisfied creator, and a more ethical consumer of products. Her e-mail to a young friend describing her reason for involvement in artisanal activity, shares her passion adequately;

"If one feels, as I do, that the critical direction to be sought in social action and social involvement is towards addressing the underlying causes of violence in society, the economic sphere is the logical locus. In the early days of involvement, I thought that 'constructive action' was enough, but I soon came to realize that without political dimensions, no amount of development of the constructive would suffice. At the same time it is clear to me that the political alone without a sane, clear and fully articulated working methodology for the practice of economic activity is insufficient. It is the artisanal world where tools of production, knowledge, and [in the subsistence activities such as bamboo, pottery, etc] the raw materials, are cheaply and freely available to all, and because of this large scale access, potential exists for equity participation by all including producer families, in the benefits of the activity. In this country, artisan occupations are a vital and vibrant part of society, whereas in other places, including China, they seem to have been relegated to a niche. Within the existing artisanal world, there are lots of problems to be confronted and understood, mainly but not only the relation of the artisanal to the market economy. The market economy itself is a lifetime study, with its historical roots in medieval Europe [Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation is a must read]. There is also the question of technology, which can be addressed at various levels. When one is directly involved with an occupation such as the domestic production of cotton cloth, doubts about directions and levels are addressed in a real context. The challenge in our work has been to link the developing and expanding philosophical understanding to the minutae of daily interchange, whether within the office, where we spend most of our existence, or with the other participants in the activity, ranging from weaver, dyer and spinner families to the customers of the fabrics. Articulation and exchange of thoughts, ideas and doubts is undoubtedly inadequate in the process, but we are aware of the problem."

A STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS By Uzramma

Subba Raju, a PhD from IIT, Mumbai, now lives and works in Timbaktu, Anantapur district. He says that from the time he was in the 5th standard he knew that he wanted to be a teacher, and would be daydreaming in class of what his classroom would be like, the dimensions of the blackboard etc. Like him, I had a dream from an early age, but unlike his, it was a vague, inchoate dream, of a better world, better ways of being, above all, without violence. It was developed in isolation, within myself and I seemed to lack the means and the ability to communicate with others or to share my inner world, perhaps because circumstances did not allow the development of that companionship; I had no sisters and my brother is 9 years younger than me. I was engaged to be married, against my will, at the age of 18, married at 19, had my first child at 21. A strong component of that better world was justice or equity, inclusiveness, it had to be for everyone. A sense of beauty had to include a way of being. This comes I think from the long Sufi tradition and is my version of religion. Read a lot when I was a child. Though my brief undergraduate life was enjoyable, it did not include any intellectual companionship, except that of Gita Patnaik [Mehta] who was a year senior to me...she was typical of the intellectuals of my little circle who were from the upper levels of society and essentially frivolous, wit was prized above all. There were strong political and public service traditions in my family. My father's brother was a leading light in the early days of the Communist party of India, and my father's whole family was always sympathetic to that political stream, my generation considered it part of their heritage, along with his mother's political activism [she fought against purdah and child marriage and was an MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly)]. I had always been attracted by hand-tools, and in museums been more interested in folk rather than to court crafts. In England I finally connected with my leanings towards artisanal work and craft. Learning goldsmithing & engraving, the co-ordination of hand, eye, brain, changed my inner world and my way of thinking. The elation that comes with solving a technical problem is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world. Also of materializing something that begins as a picture in the mind. The years in England bred a discipline and a determination to overcome the wrenching loss of self that came with displacement. That, and the new world opened up by the use of hand-tools were the two radical influences. From those experiences came the confirmation of the inner conviction that it was the artisan way of thinking that held the clue to the Brave New World, a way of problem-solving based on the pragmatic understanding of materials and circumstances, of the real as expressed in the making, the close meshing of mind, eye & hand, not the delusions created by the mind without those restraints. The will to take an active part in reaching the distant ideal also took shape, within a context of strong emotional disturbance, and early in the exile I began to take steps towards a return to India. I couldn't breathe there, though I soaked up the cultural life of London, the off-West End experimental theatre and the art films. I came back on visits to Hyderabad from 1981 onwards, asked Laila how to start, she suggested contacting the AP Handicrafts Development Corporation. I began my forays into the artisan world through them and offered my services free of charge for design development, first for Kondapally and Nirmal, which they accepted. They sent Venkaiah of the Design Development Centre with me on my first few trips. This overcame my clueless-ness of how to reach village India. I went to Kondapally and began by working out a richer colour palette than the one they used. It met with great initial resistance, but has eventually been a factor in the subsequent success of Kondapally. I knew socially the founders of Dastkar, and it was Bunny Page who suggested that I should start a branch of it in Andhra. Initially, appointed consultant to APHDC in 1989, I visited several artisan clusters, including where possible cotton handloom weaving societies though that was not part of my brief. Interventions with varying degrees of success were attempted in Nirmal, Kondapally, Etikoppaka, and on longer terms in Kalahasti & Eluru. I 'always knew' it was cotton handlooms that were to be the eventual field. I cannot find the roots of this knowledge within myself. It comes I think of an intuition of how closely cotton and cotton cloth is enmeshed in the Indian psyche and my own feeling for soft cotton cloth. Somehow that softness is related to the desire for non-violence, peace and harmony. In May 1990 I met P B Srinivas, and for the first time had the experience of sharing ideas and developing thoughts in collaboration with someone. We shared an exploration of Foucault, which both of us had independently begun, and were jointly struck with excitement at the discovery of Foucault's ideas, which for me were a continuation of my meditation on power. PB introduced me to Illich, and again it was deeply exciting to share the experience. We admired Gandhi's boldness in experimentation, his confidence in his own intuition, his absolute rootedness and sense of reality. I knew there was a sweeter, richer life outside the bourgeois world of table-napkins and handbags, one closer to ground reality, and I found it in my wanderings with Srinivas in the villages of Adilabad. The bliss of outdoor bathing in Kusnapally in water fresh from the well, manchi neelu, good water, good enough to drink. Middle class friends thought I was heroic to travel in buses; I found it comfortingly real. I was interested in theoretical exploration of themes & ideas but was not academically trained or rigorous enough to develop ideas.....find myself in harmony with the ideas of the Anarcho-Syndicalists. The work of Dastkar Andhra has been very much a group effort, my contribution has been intuitive rather than practical. Because we started off in an exploratory fashion, we were able to cast about until we developed a complex, mutually supportive set of activities centred around cloth, cotton, and dyeing involving direct contact with artisanal production, archival research, practical experimentation and marketing. It was this exploratory way of working, I think, that in the early days attracted the IIT crowd and other young persons of high caliber. A few months ago I was able to hand over the responsibility of the organization to the younger members. I'm still in charge of the small-scale spinning development, and will be for the next three years. This is a revolutionary technology, [developed by an IIT engineer, L Kannan, who has been associated with our cotton exploration for the last 12 years, since the first Traditional Sciences Congress held by the Patriotic & People-Oriented Science & Technology Foundation] through which producers can complete the cycle of cotton growing to cloth in their own regions. It brings the idea of self-reliance back into khadi, not individually through svavalamban but through production by interlinked producer collectives. Once we are able to get small-scale power generation it will become even more self-sufficient. Now I spend more time in my jewelry workshop. My designs are abstract, graphic, gold on silver at present, later I want to add copper. I want to convey a sense of movement through the lines, mobility, freedom, change. I want to challenge conventions, of precious/non-precious metals, of traditional jewelry as investment loaded onto the woman. There is a sense of cosmic right to which a maker must be true but societal rules must be challenged, shown to be restrictive, hierarchic, pandering to power. I would like to spend more time talking to young people, not necessarily formal talks, but sharing ideas, dreams and experiences. Footnote: on my sending the essay to Uzramma for review she wanted to expand on her experience. Her musings give a personal depth to the ideas one has been writing about and gives a feel of real-time interactivity while sharing such issues.

As the French President Jacques Chirac’s term comes to its end, the city of Paris is gifted with a new museum. The Musee du Quai Branly is devoted to the ‘arts and civilisation of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas - a home for the forgotten civilisations’. Amidst a range of controversies, the ambitious museum celebrates bio-diversity on its external walls, as 150 species of flora grow as a vertical garden. Close by, stand the headquarters of UNESCO. In 2001, UNESCO adopted the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, which the then Director-General, Koichiro Matsura hoped would ‘one day acquire as much force as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. Diversity is being seen as one of the most central challenges of our times, and in Matsura’s own words - ‘as necessary for the human race as bio-diversity in the natural realm’.¹

On the one hand, diverse ways of living are being museumified. On the other, a call is made for their very future. A young Punjabi girl hand-embroiders on mill-made chiffon; I gaze at samples from not so long ago, where the background cloth was hand-spun and handwoven khadi - enabling a lush Phulkari surface, exquisite in its colour and reflection of light. With no such khadi available today, phulkari undergoes a transformation. Traditionally embroidered by the mother for her daughter’s trousseau, as a rite of passage, they sell at Dilli Haat as insipid chiffon and synthetic dupattas and scarves. For a moment, as a light wind picks up, they flutter like Buddhist prayer flags, almost as if calling out for help: a prayer to prevent them from dying under our very own eyes. What is lost, in this act of vanishing? What is lost, in the loss of a craft? In November 2005, Dr Jyotindra Jain narrated a fascinating personal experience at the inaugural seminar of the International Centre for Indian Crafts, at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. He spoke of a trip he had once taken to a master dyer in Rajasthan with a few foreigners. The foreigners were stunned at how batch after batch, the dyer was able to produce an exactness of shade with great ease, and at the same time, improvise spontaneously to achieve variations in colour. To the western mind, this was fascinating, no less than magic: how could someone with no visible measuring apparatus, or any seemingly ‘scientific’ procedure, accomplish this? ‘How do you know…?’, they asked. ‘How do you know when the dye is right, when the temperature is right…?’ The master dyer, miffed by the constant queries, could not explain how he knew in their terms. He responded by placing a drop of the dye on the tip of his tongue. He exclaimed: ‘This is how I know!’ Dr Jain’s account is more memorable than mine. However, for a person involved with crafts, this interesting account not only provides a perfect starting point for an enquiry into the what’s, how’s and why’s of crafts, but also explains a facet of the ‘Great Indian Tradition’ that needs to be recognised, understood and accounted for. It also prompts a deeper enquiry into locating the role of crafts within some larger spaces - be they material, intellectual, philosophical, spiritual, economic and cultural, or local and international. What are crafts? What is their role in todays’s world? What is their location in the emergencies and requirements of a fast-changing world? How do we ensure their future? Why? Boring questions, that have been asked again and again. And yet, answers seem to elude many of us. It is time then, to go back to the basics of what crafts were and what they stand for. To look at them as a technology, as a means of livelihood, as an expression of a people…and yet, not just we designers, but each one of us who understands the increasing threats to diverse expressions and creative freedom, must ask these questions: consumers, businessmen, politicians… This souvenir from Janpath that I take so proudly for my friends in Canada - who makes them, and what does he earn? Is it enough for the pride it gives me in being Indian? How can I understand the structures of a hand-technology and product - perhaps the Jamdani - so that my innovation comes not from a surface motif variation, but the structure, the weight of fabric, the weaving process itself? This, might give rise to a new form altogether… This rare technique of glazing, how can I use my business acumen to chart its future, as a differentiated product in an international market? How long can we further marginalise communities to a level of such helplessness that leads to violent separatist movements…? Will we ever realise that there can be no peace unless we include all in the process of development? Crafts have evolved as a natural technology of making and doing things of everyday use and value. The form and shape of a product emerges out of the combined act of observation, of use and function and of the nature of material itself. This is a careful process, where many factors came together to inform and imbue the product with meaning: meaning through its use, through what it invoked in the mind and being of the maker, and through what it invokes in the mind and being of the user. The maker, the material, the tools, the user and its use: all of these came together to give rise to those very material artefacts that we now preserve in museums and galleries. Ananda Coomaraswamy once quoted William Morris, who pointed out that the objects we now exhibit in museums were “once the common objects of the market place…and amongst all those whom we dare to call ‘uncivilised peoples, ‘art’ had no other meaning than the ‘right way of making things’, ‘things’ being anything whatever required by man to serve his needs, whether physical or spiritual.” ² In young, shining, modern India, such methods and processes might seem archaic, unnecessary and perhaps even retrogressive to some. For a young nation, making ‘high-technology’ strides, what do these ways of doing and making represent? In these times, the word ‘technology’ is normally used to describe a fast-paced and mechanised ways of doing things. Often, this word is prefixed by ‘high’ to denote ‘high-tech’. This implies that if there is a high in technology, there must be a low. These ‘lower’ ways of making and creating become the last priorities in a nation already under heavy stresses and pressures. However, technology can be simply defined as a way of doing things, and in a country like India, that lives in so many centuries, and in so many eras, all these kinds of processes acquire a place. Technologies are of all kinds, of different capabilities. They all contribute to the diversity in India, giving India its unique character. Language, script, motif and technology: the tools with which we converse and live become critical agents in keeping diversity alive. In many ways, I find craft a lot like language. A Kumaoni from Nainital would be helpless at translating words such as ‘bal or ‘thera’ into English…there is no equivalent to such words in English. And neither are there equivalents for the experiences and life that inform the evolution of such words; the experience of certain emotions may not exist in another place, and therefore will not find expression in the language of that place. Crafts, to go back to Dr Jain’s story, cannot in their totality, be understood on the same terms as other technologies. If they need to be enquired into, they require a familiarisation in ways that respect its ethos. An exporter demands 500 cushion covers that look exactly the same: a hand-process cannot, and must not even attempt such exactnesses. Human processes of dyeing may not use ‘scientific’ apparatus, but need not see the use of such apparatus as being a more evolved method of dyeing. Everything has its own intelligence, a nature of its being, of its innateness. The knot in a handmade textile tells you of the yarn that broke in the process of weaving. A slight variation in a carved statue from another, tells you the maker thought of something different at that moment (perhaps he was for a minute distracted by a sound somewhere far?). In these ways, crafts help us connect to the maker, to hear a story… (romantic notion, you might say). And yet, such are our times of increasing virtualisation that we crave for such human contact. ‘…We are always behind this glass and metal, that we crash into each other just to feel something…’, begins the Oscar-award winning film Crash. We fight, so we can hear and be heard… We find new ways of keeping the same emotions alive so we remain who humane, not merely human. What is craft then, if not an experience which invokes and enables these emotions? Does not the play of light in a jade box, so intricately carved, evoke the same sensory experiences as a highly accomplished piece of music, or the leap of a ballet dancer? Is this not the same rasa as that aroused in a sensational performance? Crafts, to me, represent those last vestiges of the nuances of a culture, that is fast eroding, yet which we still have access to. This is what I call the experience of craft: a process, not unlike tasting wine or single malt scotch and imbibing the environment in which it was made, or appreciating the nuances of a custom-made perfume. An experience that has to be felt to be known and one that has to be connected with… The other aspect of craft today is craft as a mode of production. The number of craftspeople in India today is estimated at 23 million. ³ This represents a large number of our working force, and seeing them as critical contributors to our nation is important. This skilled hand-production, important to domestic and export markets, ensures that, luckily, even today, mechanised modular furniture and standardised sizes of windows and doors do not dictate how we build our homes and live our lives. And yet, these skills are fast becoming ‘labour’. The special place these crafts have, as a mode of production, is that they have the potential to employ skilled people on a large-scale, and in the process keep alive and further enable a creative culture that is not restricted to a few. Such skills can ensure a livelihood that not only offers economic security for the basic necessities of life, but also self-worth and dignity. Let us recognise, that these needs of human dignity and respect are as basic as roti, kapda and makaan. The country has focussed immensely on the importance of craftspeople to our exports - but has that meant a better quality of life for the craftsperson? Or more respect for him or her as a skilled contributor to the country? If craft is seen as an export industry, it is not unlike any large export corporation with a large workforce, each member of such workforce contributing to the corporation in some way. Why cannot each craftsperson then contribute to the crafts sector in the same way? I often wonder, whether given the same economic success and equal opportunity, would the children of craftsmen and women aspire to their parents’ professions? For there can be no meaningful answer to the future of crafts, unless we know the aspirations of these craftspeople for themselves and for their children. As more and more of the next generation leave their ancestral professions, I wonder if the aspiration to learn a craft would be a more common phenomenon today, if 60 years back India had recognised craftspeople, not as belonging to a disadvantaged sector in need of ‘social’ responsibility alone, but also as belonging to a strong sector, capable of individual expression and local development - a sector not unlike any other industrial sector. Why do we know ‘industry’ only as the chimneys of smoke, or the gutters of effluents ruining our rivers? Traditionally, crafts grew and evolved and reached their high levels of excellence due to a system of patronage which understood the value of its role in a society and economy. Is there not today the need for a more discerning patron? Cannot industry and business, which has sold us everything under the sun, sell us this too? Something enriching for the soul, safer for our skins, and which affords a better quality of life for its maker…? Why cannot our visionary business houses, taking their international strides, and explaining India to the world in diverse ways, transform the shanty sheds of our craftsmen into healthy and creative work environments? Why has not an IKEA come from India, making an Indian the richest man in the world, instead of Ingvar Kamprad of Sweden, the owner of IKEA? ⁴ William Morris created a company out of a movement which attacked the aesthetics of a ‘modern’ industrial age. Forget nurturing a new aesthetic, in a post-modern age, we have still not even understood what modernity means. Why can we not see the daily wage labourer across the street in his make-do tent home as the person he really is - a potter capable of fashioning the most sophisticated forms out of clay? The success of our management students is a sham if it has taken them so many decades to discover ‘the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid’. ⁵ Having discovered them as a potential market, let us now feed the craftspeople. Finally. The real reason for our loss lies deep in the loss of pride we face as a nation - across the land. We need the tableaus of the Republic Day parade to remind us of how great we are as a nation, and cover stories in glossy magazines to show us how Indians are the emerging rich and famous around the world. If we do not find a reason for something, let’s blame colonialism. If colonialism is not an answer to this procrastination, let us look deeper in history. Let us find, what is it, at its root that prevents us from knowing our own strengths. And let us then take a historic leap - to forge strong partnerships across the board - involving industry, society and government, to claim a unique position in the world. I sometimes hear doubts of relevances, of craft as an anomaly to the ‘technological’ strides India takes. Rahul Jain, textile scholar, spent the last ten years going back in history and reviving a craft which had been dead for two centuries. Today, these Meenakaris inspire awe and beauty, they sustain a rare craft. Lost for two centuries, and yet a modern resonance… I am often amazed at the way the Japanese have invented the most cutting-edge technologies, and at the same time kept rare hand-craft traditions alive, so often within traditional patronage systems. India’s future lies in not adopting one monolithic position, where handmade is threatened by the mechanised sector, and the mechanised so stunted in its growth due to subsidies to the handmade sector. The future lies in understanding the affordances of both these technologies, and in negotiating the space for both to exist, not in opposition, but in relation to each other. In this process might begin the genesis of a new aesthetic. And yet, to me the development of printing technology to simulate the careful work of Ikat offers no more than a cheap substitute… perhaps there is something new that artisans and designers can discover together, in the process of Ikat…something which is an altogether ‘other’. This would be pushing the frontiers of innovation and creativity. Many say, crafts will find their own future, just the way they have always. Who are we to decide or know better than the craftspeople. Crafts will change with changes in geo-political situations and cross-fertilisation of cultures. Potters in Ahmedabad start selling plastic statues of Jadoo - the famous alien from the Hrithik Roshan film, block-printers print dinosaurs… Understanding the opportunities globalisation provides, and the immediate concerns of poverty alleviation and making available a better quality of life, India has the chance of a lifetime. Let us not give lip service to the carriers of the most sophisticated knowledge and skills without understanding and knowing the immense role they play in keeping our country creatively alive. Gandhi once said ‘there is an art that kills, and one that gives’. Let us celebrate the birth of a new culture that nurtures all.

REFERENCES:

The Economist, June 15th 2006; The Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity: http/www.unesco.org
Essay: ‘The Love of Art’ by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Published in Temenos, London 1992
Crafts as Sustainable Livelihood Option in Rural India, by Anubha Sood; M.Sc. Social Policy and Planning in Developing Countries, September 2002, London School of Economics and Political Science
In 2004, Ingvar Kamprad, owner of the international brand IKEA replaced Bill Gates as the richest man in the world, with an estimated wealth of US $ 53 billion, compared to Gates’ US $ 47 Billion. Published in the Business Weekly, April 2004
Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid is 2005’s best-selling book by Economist C. K. Prahlad.

It is important to highlight the fact that Islam was a tolerant religion, and the subjugated local people were not forced by the victor to change their beliefs, traditions, language or even administrative systems, and thus crafting industries like weaving continued. Hence, we can say that the richness of the Islamic World culture, stems from the fact that the Moslem World embraced diversified civilizations to make out of them a unique international/global civilization consisting of separate individual, but inter-related states whether Kingdoms, Empires or Sultanates, etc. To come back to the core of our topic on Islamic Textiles, I would like to start with a quotation from a 10^th century book entitled “Al-Tabassur fi al-Tijarah (An Insight Into Trade)”, by at-Jahiz, an Arab writer, which includes excerpts such as: “choose a trade that is most lucrative for you”, and “the best of trade is that of textiles and clothing”. At the advent of Islam in the 7^th century (622 AD), the Early Arab Moslems in Hijaz, (the furthest west of present Sa’udi Arabia) were in contact with deep-rooted neighboring civilizations in Iraq, Persia, Yemen, Syria and Asia Minor (Turkey) as well as Egypt. In other words, the land of Islam was surrounded by flourishing civilizations, rich in natural resources and cultural heritage, where textiles or woven fabrics was a lucrative industry. For instance, during the ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia (Sumerians, Accadians, Babylonians) weaving was an important industry in view of the availability of the raw materials as wool, linen and cotton. The textiles industry in ancient times formed a primary economic resource for the state as it was controlled by the king and the priests. Like the Sumerians and Accadians in Iraq, the Pharaohs royal court and the temple in Egypt were responsible for the organization, management and nurturing of the textile industry. Similarly, Muslim rulers, whether caliphs, kings, sultans, or princes, were interested in trade as it was a source of wealth for the state and the people. And, due to the fact that textile, trade was a vital source of wealth in the Islamic State, it was deemed as important and was granted special attention. Islam, in such an amalgam of diversified global cultures, asserted itself in arts and craft industries, including that of textile through measures of amendment, modification, selection and elimination. For instance, silk, as a raw material, was disregarded by Moslems, being considered as an aspect/manifestation of luxury. Consequently its use for clothing was restricted to narrow strips of woven or embroidered inscriptions and decorative elements which were restricted to geometric floral and foliated stylized forms. This was due to the rejection of the three-dimensional human, animal or plant representations (which is Hellenistic in essence). Hence stylization, two-dimensional, and non- zoomorphic decoration are features of Islamic art and crafts, hence of textiles. One of the significant features of Islamic textiles is the “Tiraz”. “Tiraz” is an Arabized Persian word meaning “embroidery”. The Tiraz concept, in its Islamic notion, was initiated early during the Umayyad Caliphate in Damascus-Syria, in the 8^th century. It refers to a band that is woven, embroidered or attached to the edge of a piece of fabric. Such bands, frequently Arabic calligraphy, are horizontal rather than vertical, to align with the Arabic script. The period of the Orthodox Caliphs, which followed the death of Prophet Mohammad (632-61 AD) was austere and void of any luxury. The Umayyads after them established a Dynasty (661-750 AD) in Damascus-Syria away from Makka. The Umyyad Caliph Hisham bin 'Abd at-Malik (724-743 AD) introduced the Tiraz concept and the rest of the Caliphs followed suite. This was also relevant to the Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad and the Moslem rulers throughout the Islamic world. They used to have their names and titles woven, embroidered on expensive fabrics with silk, gold or silver threads. The word "Tiraz" subsequently evolved, to be applied to textile factories, so much so that they became known as the "Dar at-Tiraz"’ or "House of Tiraz". The Umayyads safeguarded the textile factories thatwere in existence prior to the Islamic conquests. They were kept in their original administrative and organizational conditions, as was the case in Alexandria in Egypt. The factories were classified under two types, "Private Tiraz“ and "Public Tiraz". The first, "Private Tiraz”, was specialized in the production of fabrics for the Caliph or ruler, his family, and his court. The products included clothing, upholstery, splendid gifts and robes of honor (khil'ah) which were occasionally granted to ministers and top officials, such as governors, army commanders, judges, clergymen and the like. Moreover, the "Private Tiraz" was responsible for preparing the "annual covering for the Holy Ka'bah" (Kuswat at-Ka'bah). The "Private Tiraz" houses extended throughout the Islamic world. Rulers or Princes, established their own "Private Tiraz" houses that manufactured all their textile requirements. Subsequently, the management of the Tiraz houses was no longer affiliated to the State, and several of them shifted to the private sector, under the ownership of rich individuals. In the 10^th AD, for instance, one specific owner possessed eighty textile houses or factories. The other type of Tiraz, the "Public Tiraz", refers to the local factories that specialized in manufacturing fabrics to be used by the common public. They were also employed to assist "Private Tiraz" when textiles were in high demand for the state. Initially, the "Tiraz" houses were state-owned and hence the textile industry was attended to by the Caliphs, rulers and other high officials, particularly during the Abbasid era, when a special administrative bureau called "Diwan al-Tiraz" was created for that purpose. It was led under the Supervisor, "Sahib al- Tiraz", who usually enjoyed high political standing and trust of the Caliph or ruler. Thus, both the Private and the Public houses were under strict state-supervision, in view of their economic and political importance that yielded wealth and power to the State. The "Dar al-Tiraz" system spread in the Islamic world including: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Anatolia (Asia Minor), Egypt, North Africa, Sicily and Spain. Tiraz houses, or textile factories, were indicators of the State's power and weakness. The immense production of various textiles was not restricted to Egypt and Iraq. Most of the Islamic countries, extending from Trans Oxania in the east, to Morocco, Sicily and Andalusia-Spain in the west, as well Tabaristan, Azerbaijan and Armenia in the north, and Yemen in the south, contributed to the textile production according to the available resources and Spe‘idliLdlit2115. To the east of the Caliphate in Baghdad, the textile factories in Iran, reputable in the textiles industry for several centuries, prior to the emergence of Islam, produced the finest and most exquisite textiles. The industry continued to thrive. State-affiliated "Private and Public Tiraz houses" were established in many cities in Iran. In Trans Oxania region, the furthest extended region on the eastern borders of the Islamic World at that time, the capital city of "Bukhara" collected taxes in the form of specimens of expensive brocade and cotton fabrics. The city of "Samarciand" as well was a textile hub for goods and merchants. The northern regions of Tabaristan, Azerbaijan and others, as well as Armenia at the Byzantine borders enjoyed great reputation in silk weaving and production. Since the 10th Century AD, Egypt competed with Baghdad in all domains, including the textile industry. "Private" and "Public" Tiraz Houses proliferated throughout the country. The precious contents of the "Garment" and "Furnishings" treasures of Egypt's numerous palaces, particularly the upholstery, clothing and tents surpassed those of the Abbasid courts in Baghdad. The period from 10th Century AD up till the end of the 11th Century, was considered the golden age of textiles in Egypt. The textile industry peaked in both quantitative and qualitative terms. In addition to the immense local consumption, Egypt exported its textiles to the east and to Rome and some Italian kingdoms in the west, where their intricacy and beauty made them worthy of being used in religious edifices like churches and convents. Sicily, which was under the Muslim Aghlabids of North Africa rule, at the end of the 9th Century AD, was introduced to the "Tiraz" system, and manufactured woolen, linen and silk textiles. In Palermo there was a market that especially catered to the "Tiraz" (fabrics with inscriptional bands) manufacturers. When Sicily was seized, by the Norman King, at the end of the 11th Century AD, the textile industry was not affected and vastly developed. The Normans established textile factories that resembled the Muslim "Tiraz Houses". North Africa and Morocco, were considered to be the least productive in textiles and least interested in the Tiraz system among the Islamic countries. North Africa flourished only when the region was split into small independent dynasties. Following this division, the rulers established "Tiraz houses" in their palaces and other locations. For example Tiraz Houses were established in Al-Qayrawan City in Tunisia at the 10th century, after becoming a governorate of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghadad (800-909 AD). It was then one of the greatest North African cities and the country's largest and most important trading hub. Later when the Ubaydis took over, "al-Mandiyyah" city, (the capital), flourished to the extent that its exports, including textiles, reached eastward to the Iranian island of Kish in the Gulf. "Fez", the main Islamic city in the furthest west of North Africa (Morocco), was renowned for manufacturing and dyeing textiles, and it still holds this reputation till to date. It had more than three thousand (3000) "Tiraz Houses" and one hundred (100) dyeing factories, which were not controlled by the State. Fez was bustling with merchants and artisans from various countries and, in the 12th Century AD, the number of lodges accommodating merchants reached approximately to five hundred (500) lodges. Arts and crafts industries of the East entered Spain following the Arab Muslim conquest, at the beginning of the 8th Century AD. In the 10th century, the full Tiraz system was introduced to Spain including the Tiraz houses (Dar al-Tiraz), the Tiraz Supervisor (Sahib Tiraz) etc. There was a special quarter that catered to the Tiraz specialists and weavers. The first Tiraz House "Dar al-Tiraz" was run under the administration of the palace of the Andalusian/Spanish Umayyad Caliph, Textile weaving was not restricted to the capital Cordova, which, at one point, had a total of thirteen thousand (13,000) weavers. The Tiraz system was also present in other cities, like al-Miryah, Malaga, Seville and others. After the central Spanish Umayyad Caliphate was dissolved, and the era of the local dynasties (Muluk al-Tawa'if) emerged during the first half of the 11th Century AD, economic progress was coupled with a booming commercial bourgeoisie. Thus, the textile industry in general advanced and peaked during the 13th Century AD, and accordingly, the agriculture of flax and cotton flourished, as well as safflower, which was used for dyeing. The textile clustered in southern Spain, i.e. in Andalusia, The "tiraz' houses proliferated throughout Cordova, al-Miryah, Seville, Malaga, and other cities, where each city specialized in different type of textile. For example, in "al-Miryah" there were eight hundred (800) looms for weaving silk with tiraz (inscriptional band), and one thousand 1,000 looms for weaving exquisite brocade. The textile industry like other industries, declined in the 13th century due to the devastating Mogul invasion. They recovered later under the support and patronage of certain ruling lineages, which nurtured and encouraged, crafts and arts namely: the Mamluk Sultans in Egypt (1250-1517), the Safavid Shahs in Persia (1501-1732), the Ottoman Sultans in Turkey (1281-1924) and the Mogul Emperors in India (1526-1858). As for the Mamluks in Egypt, (1250-1517AD) trade expanded because they controlled and monopolized the world trade routes, linking east and west via the Red Sea. This led to an increase in Egypt's wealth which was reflected on all aspects of infrastructure including industries and arts. The textile industry contributed a large portion of this wealth. Affluence allowed the Egyptians to spend tremendous amounts of money on luxurious and exquisite kinds of textiles. For instance, silk was their preferable fabric for clothing, though, in the previous Islamic eras, the use of silk on its own or with other extravagant details was forbidden. The golden age of Islamic textiles in Iran was during the reign of the Safavid Shahs (150 1786 AD), particularly the era of Shah Abbas (1587 - 1628 AD), when the textile industry resumed with all its glory. Under Shah Abbas' reign, Isfahan produced the rich-colored and velvet fabrics that were distinguished due to a high degree of skill, workmanship and beauty. At one point, Isfahan's velvet and richly colored silk products were deemed the best-known textiles in the world. Nonetheless, Shah Abbas did not restrict his attention to Isfahan, he also established more textile factories in the cities of Yazd and Qashan. The textiles of the Safavid era were distinguished by their decorative designs that were often inspired by Iranian epic themes, and famous tales, such as the epic "Shahnameh" of al-Ferdowsi, as well as other sources of cultural heritage. The decorative patterns of some textiles were also based on the illustrations and illuminations of famous painters, adding a sense of realism to the textiles. But after the reliance on previous sources diminished, the clothing depicted in the manuscripts reveal that decorative designs later depended on flowers both natural and stylized. Moving to the Ottoman in Turkey (1281-1924 AD), the first capital Bursa, was the main center for the textile industry, which then moved to the new capital, Istanbul. Turkey was prominent in the manufacture of richly-colored and velvet textiles that were analogous to the Safavid Iranian textiles, except for their decorative themes. Turkey had acquired several decorative motifs from the Iranians, focusing more on depicting nature rather than living creatures. The richly-colored fabrics were commonly used to manufacture clothing and they were characterized by flowers and botanical elements contained in ogival shapes. Such fabrics surpassed their Iranian counterparts, in terms of workmanship and the attractive decorations they displayed. They were deemed the finest fabric ever produced in the Orient. With regard to the decorative design adorning velvet fabrics, they differed from those used in the richly-colored fabrics, as they were larger and more intense. They were generally used for upholstery, curtains and pillows with gold and silver embroidered decorations embedded on a red background. It is apparent that in the 17th Century AD, Turkish artists diverged, to some extent, from stylization and embraced realism. During the era of the Mogul Emperors in India (1526-1858 AD), all craft industries and arts flourished. The textile industry similar to other industries, was under complete state-supervision. The Mogul Emperors were also greatly inspired by the Iranian artists, craftsmen and textile manufacturers. This led to the emergence of some Iranian attributes in their products that encompassed both the local Indian and Iranian styles. It was inevitable that the cotton industry flourished during the Mogul Emperors' reign, as it was an ancient Indian industry that was practiced by their ancestors throughout the ages. During the reign of Emperor Shah Jihan (1628 - 1658 AD), silk embroidered fabrics prospered, characterized by their profuse decorations, a diversity and abundance of colors, and an excessive use of gold threads, woven or embroidered, on clothings, scarves and saris. Velvet fabric also flourished under their rule and the foliate and floral motifs were not stylized but fully implemented in a manner that simulated nature. It is worth naming, before ending this paper, a number of the textile manufacturing cities and the specific fabrics they produce. For instance, Damascus-Syria was known for its brocade. In Egypt: the Qubati white linen fabric from Damietta, the richly coloured fabric "washy" from Alexandria, Buqalamum from Tin nis, the Qasab or gauze fine linen from Dabiq, the Mulahham from Khurasan and so on and so forth. In conclusion, it is noteworthy to mention that the "Islamic textiles", in general held a high standing throughout the world. Although the Islamic countries inherited the weaving industry from preceding civilizations, they developed the industry, excelled in it, and created new styles and techniques. The Islamic textiles' products and expertise eventually spread to Europe. Unsatisfied with importing Islamic textiles from the Orient, Near East, North Africa and Spain, Europe (France in particular) sought the help of Arab and Spanish Muslims from Spain to establish textile factories and train the indigenous craftspeople.

I stand here, with the intention of briefing you about the methodology and richness of the naksha (pattern) which goes into the weaving of the Himru garment, something which was passed down to be by my great-grandfather, Shri Ali Hasan alias Kalloo Hafiz, who was also honored with the Padmashree award for his contribution to the weaving and handicraft industry. This picture shows him working on a jala. There a number of steps preceding the creation of the naksha. The first step is to inscribe it on paper and then weave it along the respective pattern thus formulated, which ultimately ends up determining the amount of thread and the pattern of the garment that has to be made. There is a methodology of doing it which has been handed down to us, as craftsmen. My grandfather, Zafar Ali, is shown here performing the afore-mentioned action and the picture on the left contains a complete naksha, which will then be taken to the loom for weaving – the two are entirely different processes and often a cause of perplexity. To create a respective design into a naksha is an aspect of the special knowledge possessed by us as artisans. A thick cotton thread is required in the process of creating the design, which will be made into a chaukhri in order to create a block of length 12/16 inches. Consumption of betel leaves was pretty popular amongst ancient craftsmen of this tradition, which led to the coloration of the thread, something that my grandfather also partook in, occasionally. He was awarded the national award for one of his exquiste Baluchari pieces.

I personally am well acquainted with the usage of handmade as well as graphically designed pieces, something I have adjusted myself to. A small panel offered me the dealership of a buta design and the picture on the right contains a peacock made by my grandfather. I have a repository of the Konya design made by me and my grandfather and have brought a portrait along, the naksha in which was designed and weaved by my grandfather. The number of hoops involved in the same was 2400, which complicated the process because the color combinations and dimensions render it difficult to construct the design and avoid gaps in any way.

I am humbled to say that my Baluchari pieces have been displayed in the retro gallery, constructed on the occasion of the Commonwealth games and I have designed Baluchari sarees, receiving a national award for the same, which required me to weave in 20-25 patterns together. However, this is strange that Himru, which was a flourishing craft in the past, has been exposed to decay and impoverishment, for want of funds. Craftsmen like us stand in dire need of patronage in order to earn our livelihood in an increasingly mechanized and capitalist world and the increasing diversion of attention from handlooms and traditional methodologies of craftsmanship. My only dream is for my art to live on through the younger generation, something that has been facing a steady decline over the past few years. What is necessary in this moment of crisis is to understand that a nation and a demography’s identity lay in its culture, something which cannot possibly be taken over by industrialization. Artisans need to be patronized in order to preserve their art and a good time to start would be now. Thank you. This speech was delivered by Mr.Naseem Ahmad at the India International Centre, November 23^rd, 2019.

Issue #007, Winter, 2021 ISSN: 2581- 9410

As a teenager I adored going with my mother to one of the many handblock printers then in Delhi, while she got her saris printed - tussars, silks, chanderis, mulmuls. At that time there were several printing units in the Jama Masjid, Sarojini Nagar, Bhogal, and South Extension areas, and we would sit on wooden benches in their workrooms, while they brought out their “chadars” or ‘blankets’, on which all their motifs and borders and jaals would be printed and numbered. My mother would then swiftly sketch out the layout of the sari and number each of the component parts - the pallav, the borders, the body, with the blocks she had chosen, and mark the colours as well from the dyed thread skeins the printer would produce. As they got to know my mother’s aesthetic, they would often ask her to design some sarees for them to sell as well, and soon we were spending the day there, sharing their food and numerous cups of tea; taking mitthais as our contribution. Each printer had his own set of blocks with very few duplications, and (if my memory is right), in the 60s one saw more Farrukhabad style designs than the Sanganeri and Bagru prints that became popular later. Perhaps this was because many of the Delhi printers came originally from Farrukhabad. One hardly sees those lovely allover multicoloured jaals of interlocking paisleys, flowers, fauna, and foliage now, linked in their imagery both to the jaals and motifs of traditional chikankari embroidery and to those of Banarsi brocades. In my early barsaati days, I hung Farrukhabad bedcovers as my curtains. Aged 13 or 14, I never dreamt that my life would later be interwoven so closely with Indian craftspeople. My father longed for me to join the Foreign Service in his footsteps and I myself thought I was going to be an Artist with a capital A! But block printing remained a recurring theme. When I was in art school in Baroda, I discovered a khari printer down the lane from my college hostel, and took great pride in getting a sari done for my mother in this beautiful metallic medium. His repertoire was the striking, much more stylised abstract and geometric style known as Saudagiri, originally much in demand for export to Africa. I still remember the stray strands of sparkling silver or gold resin in his black beard! in the mid 1960s, my parents were posted to Japan, and I followed them there to continue my art studies. We travelled all over Japan and saw the wonderful flowering of Japanese craft. This including many forms of textile printing and dying, including batik, shibori, and surface and resist printing of all kinds. Indian printers possibly had greater mastery of multiple colours in a single design, but I loved the flow and abstraction of Japanese block design, compared to the rather formalised layouts of Indian butis laid out in diagonal or horizontal rows. I also loved the respect the Japanese gave their craftspeople - not differentiating between craftspeople and studio painters, as used to be our tradition in India too, before the advent of the British. Coming back to India and setting up my own studio barsaati in the late 1960s, the determination to earn my own living meant taking on design assignments - garments, interiors, stage costumes and sets, graphic design..... Though these included developing block print designs for Ritu Kumar, CCIC, Rukmini and THE SHOP, I was mainly working with carpenters, painters, embroiderers, tailors.... Ritu’s huge Kolkota karkhana was incredible, resounding with the thump of dozens of printers going “thupp thupp thupp”, and shelf after shelf of numbered exquisite blocks.

It was an assignment to go to Kutch as visiting designer in 1977 that put me in touch with block printers again. My six months in Kutch, then a relatively unknown, uncharted landscape, was life changing. My conversations and work with artisans there made that vital connection between the lives of craftspeople and the crafts they created suddenly vividly clear, defining the course of my life for ever.

Ismail Bhai Khatri, son of Mohammed Bhai Khatri

Two of those craftspeople were Mohammed Bhai Khatri, the master Ajrakh printer from Dhamadka and Hassan Moosa Khatri, who had a chemical dyeing and printing unit in Bhuj. They shared the warmth, generosity, and open hospitality so characteristic of Kutchi craftspeople of all communities and skills, but couldn’t be more different in their practice. Mohammed Bhai was as much an artist and scholar as entrepreneur, researching old techniques of ajrakh printing, which had fallen into disuse at the time. He revived the 17 stages of double-sided ajrakh printing, brought back indigo and natural dyes made in-house from local plants and minerals, and, by studying broken blocks and old fabric scraps, re-introduced many of the old ajrakh motifs that had been forgotten. But he was also an innovator, relishing working with Prabha ben, Sulekha, Archana Shah, other NID students and then me, on developing new layouts, doing saris and dupattas, trying new fabrics. His gentle wisdom, his knowledge, his passion for his craft, influenced us all, leading to three generations of award-winning sons, grandsons and great grandsons following in his steps. Hassan Moosa was quite the opposite. A pragmatic, jovial, unsentimental character, for him block printing was a business. If the market wanted cheap bedcovers with large quickly printed designs, he would supply them. If people preferred roses, sunbursts, and butterflies to the complex interlocking geometrics of local Ajrakh and Saudagiri prints, he would get his blocks made accordingly. When screen printing proved a quicker way of production he quickly switched over. But when he found a new demand for authentic ajrakh, he happily re-started that too. That tension between the market and tradition, and the sensitive balance between the two that craftspeople and designers needed to maintain, was an important learning. For Mohammed Bhai the integrity of his craft tradition was paramount, for Hassan Moosa orders and income coming in was the driver. Both served me up delicious meat dinners in an otherwise vegetarian environment!

Another learning for me was that methods and processes that seemed erratic and unsystematic had their own logic. Working with block printers in Deesa in Banaskantha later, I was surprised at first at the way the long block-printing tables were sometimes laid out in one part of the large verandah and courtyard, and sometimes another, apparently at random. Similarly, the clothes line for drying the printed fabric was sometimes hung between these two trees and sometimes at the other end of the plot. Only observation made me realise, that depending on the time of the day I visited, the tables and fabric were arranged to catch the direction of the sun in such a way as to enable quick drying and yet avoid fading. Similarly, that orders sometimes took a couple of weeks, at other times a couple of months, depended not just on availability of raw material but the weather. Printing in rainy or humid weather resulted in smudgy runny printing. Colours too need to be mixed in small batches when required, and could not be made and stored in advance without a change in colour and consistency. City-bred management and social development types need to tune into these age-old knowledge systems and rhythms before offering knee-jerk solutions or labelling traditional artisan practices as inefficient and lazy.

Jan Muhammad

Block printing was often an essential part of my other great love – embroidery. In Lucknow working with chikankari karigars, or designing garments with ari and sozni embroiderers in Kashmir, we first block-printed the motifs onto the cloth, according to layouts I developed. Printing was done either with a mix of Robin Blue bleach and turpentine or with a white chalk powder if the fabric was a dark one. Then the craftspeople (women in Lucknow, both men and women in Kashmir), used their own creative imaginations and combination of colours and stitches to bring the printed designs to life. I still remember a long day holed up with Jan Muhammad in his tiny stuffy attic in Srinagar, while first water cannon and then gunfire exploded all around us as the security forces and stone pelters battled it out below. Jan Muhammad, meditatively puffing at his hookah in between meticulously positioning blocks, his main concern that he had nothing to feed me with, said both sides were “idiots”, but at least the stone pelters had youth to excuse them. As someone prone to omanticizing the past, and mourning the lost quality and design of 17^th and 18^th century block printing, my friendship of over 35 years with Brigitte Singh, and the perfection of what she has been able to achieve in her little workplace in Amer was a revelation. Here was no dilettante expat “passing time” in picturesque India! Her uncompromising perfectionism and eye for detail, the precision of both her blocks and her printing, the impeccable registration and subtle melding of as many as 10-12 colours in a single design, her respect for the craftspeople with whom she works, are a lesson for all of us working in craft. So is her research, with inspiration coming from old scraps of textile, or the edge of a patka in a Mughal era miniature seen in a museum. Most of all the depth and humility with which she sees herself as part of a continuing stream of craftspeople and design tradition: improving, developing, contemporarising… but not crudely superimposing alien elements. Another expatriate bride, seeing India and Indian crafts and designs with fresh eyes, was Faith Hardy, who created ANOKHI with her husband John Singh in 1970. They too used the block prints of Sanganer and Bagru and motifs of Rajasthani architecture as design inspiration, as well as the traditional cuts and wearing styles of the area. Their label and vibrant, singing designs, gradually branching out from garments to soft furnishings and home accessories, became hugely popular in the UK and Europe, as well as the best-selling ANOKHI stores all over India. ANOKHI is now run by their son Pritam and his wife, who continue the ethical work practices and innovation begun by Pritam’s parents 50 years ago. Research, constant design development, a continual documentation of motifs, techniques, and printing traditions, have played a big part in their continuing success and the ANOKHI Museum is a permanent legacy of that work. Given the richness and range of block-printing and craft all over the country, most designers have worked within traditional motif traditions. Nellie Sethna and Ritu Kumar tapped Kalamkari, Brigitte Singh and Faith Singh were inspired by Rajasthani and Mughal designs, Prabha Shah and Sulekha used Ajrakh and Saudagiri prints to dramatic effect. I myself was inspired by Kalamkari and chikankari, as well as imagery from Bidri metal inlay and Kashmiri walnut wood. Three design brands who tapped an innovative new vein are People Tree, Bindaas Unlimited, and Mala Sinha’s BODHI. The former twos quirky ranges, incorporating steaming coffee cups, coins, bicycles, motorcars, kerosene lamps and even yoga postures, were young and fresh, attracting a new audience for block prints. Resist printed T-shirts were a novelty in the 80s. BODHI did something equally new for its time. Mala Sinha, owner and NID-trained designer, used textures, both abstract as well as inspired by the grain of wood, falling raindrops, calligraphy, the warp and weft of textiles or the graduated ripples of water, as her inspiration. These, combined with more traditional borders and pallavs, created a sophisticated contemporary look for her sarees. Like ANOKHI, Mala and her husband Pradeep believe in green, ethical practices. Their water recycling plant and ecologically run work space is a much visited model.

Babu Lal with Laila Tyabji

In the early 1990s, Dastkar was invited to work with the rural communities that had been displaced by the creation of the Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. Mainly herders, they had lost their ancestral grazing lands and access to fodder, firewood and water. Teaching the women how to do patchwork, make toys and mobiles, and stitch garments, we realised that we needed our own fabrics, sourced locally, to give the initially basic products a distinctive and different look. Sawai Madhopore had once been a handblock printing centre, but the craft appeared to have totally died out. Finally, in a narrow dark cul de sac in the old city, we tracked down an elderly block printer, Ram Narayan Chhipa. He himself was too old and frail to restart his business but we managed to persuade his son to take up the challenge. So Babu Lal joined the Dastkar Ranthambore family and still is an integral part of it 29 years later; as is his son. The blocks the family owned were crude and indistinguishable from similar motifs all over Rajasthan, so we developed our own designs.

The Dastkar Ranthambore tiger

There were two sources of inspiration for the block motifs. Since the Ranthambore Project was all about the forest, the tigers and other wildlife, we held a competition where the village school children came and drew animals, trees, birds, and themselves. Their naif charming sketches were then translated into block designs. The Ranthambore block-printed tiger, on kids garments, quilts, shoulder bags, and cushions, is a much loved whimsical image that is known all over the world. The other source of motifs were the wonderful mandnas the village women painted on their walls with brushes made of shredded palm leaves - white limewash on the brown mud surfaces, or sometimes the reverse - red clay on limewash. The stylised peacocks, camels, horses, deer, or geometric mandala shapes converted into dramatic block designs that, mixed with more traditional borders and butis, helped give the Ranthambore product range its own distinct identity. All craft is a composite of social, cultural, economic, aesthetic and technical influences. Indian block printing has it all - the influences of caste, religion, gender, and location that help preserve skills and motif traditions within geographies and families, the effect of Government and NGO livelihood schemes that have drawn in women and others outside the community who did not traditionally practice the craft, thus increasing numbers but also diluting quality and integrity. The mind changes that the use of computers, smart phones and WhatsApp have made possible. The potential and perils of a growing but fickle consumer base and the advent of new printing technologies. The fact that block- is marketed as “green” but seldom addresses the issue of toxic chemicals and water pollution. That innovation and new design are essential, but need sensitivity and understanding of the medium and its USP. The past and present of Indian block-printing is rich and diverse. Its future, in today difficult climate, remains a question mark. ‘Slow’ processes are gaining recognition, but the people practicing them must be convinced of their worth too, and their own value as craftspeople. As Ismail Bhai Khatri, Mohammed Bhai’s son, said to me recently, “The world is rushing and changing faster and faster. Craft is a meditative practice and creating something with your hands has a special emotional significance. You can’t put a price to that.” But does that hold any meaning for a younger, aspirational, new generation?

Issue #10, 2023 ISSN: 2581- 9410 Our story begins more than 30 years ago, back in 1992 with the commercialization of cotton garments made with naturally colour grown cotton from the seed. This is a variety of cotton that has been growing naturally coloured in the wild for over 5,000 years. With the textile industrial revolution and the discovery of chemical dyeing in 1856, the traditional cultivation of naturally coloured cotton varieties that had been done since time immemorial was abandoned. We are pioneers in the manufacture of clothes made of organic cotton and without dyes, free of toxins and chemicals, ensuring completely harmless garments for health, providing a solution for people with various skin pathologies and dermal sensitivities.

We have the commitment to preserve these ancient varieties for Brown and Green colour that mixed between Ecru give us a range of 6 different colour shades. Now we want to generate an even more positive impact by offering only regenerative organic cotton from Brazil, Turkey and Egypt. Today we are offering yarns, fabrics and manufactured services for brand that are looking for the purest and most traceable regenerative cotton for a better world.

The current model of the textile industry remains highly polluting and socioeconomically very unfair. Cotton is the most produced natural fibre in the world, with an annual production of 27,000 million tons, which represents around 25% of the world's fibre production, 5% are other natural and animal fibres (wool, flax, silk,...), and the remaining 70% are synthetic fibres such as polyester. 98% of cotton production is carried out with conventional means of industrial cultivation (use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, massive use of water resources, monocultures that impoverish the soil, use of cheap labour, intensive use of capital in industrial productions that hinder the competition of small local farmers), which turns conventional cotton farming into an unsustainable industry, harmful to the environment and people, and socioeconomically unfair.

On the other hand, the fabric dyeing industry is based on very water-intensive and highly polluting chemical processes. The processes of black dyeing and, paradoxically, pure white dyeing are the most polluting of all.

Finally, clothing manufacturing processes have moved in recent decades to countries where labour is cheap and where labour rights are not always respected.

At Organic Cotton Colors we have had a dream for over 30 years. We want to generate a positive impact and contribute to changing the current model of the textile industry. We believe we can do this by promoting Organic Cotton grown with Regenerative or Biodynamic agricultural techniques, and working exclusively with companies that transform cotton fibres into threads, fabrics and clothing that share our Vision and commitment.

Our vision and our commitment, to always offer the best cotton products for people and the planet, from the seed to the garment. That is why we started in 2012 to build our own project through family farmers that produce organic cotton and other varieties in their small land (around 1 hectare), today we have more than 300 farmers in the North East part of Brazil. We offer them stability because we fix prices for every year and we assure them to buy all they can produce. We take care of the seeds, bags, transport, ginning and certifications. A premium price of 10% is paid for the total production to the group of farmers to invest in common needs beside we give each farmer an added bonus price if the production is above standard.

In other words, the farmers are part of our business as they take the actions in the fields and we do care about their problems and needs, that’s why we sign indefinite contracts with them so we aim to only increase the number of farmers but never decrease.

Today we have been offering to our customers other origins for our organic cotton that truly meets our standard: All our products have our own OCC Guarantee label with a QR code with the environmental and social impacts of the product.

We are a BCorp company, GOTS certified and we do work with standard as Fairtrade, Demeter Byodinamic and the Economy of Love.

Issue #10, 2023 ISSN: 2581- 9410 We, Cotton Rack are a Jaipur based clothing brand with its roots in hand-spun & hand-woven natural textiles. For past 9 years we have been working closely with artisans to create and use 7 different types of hand-spun cottons that can be used across the year depending on the weather and climatic conditions. Due to dwindling winters because of ongoing climate change, we usually focus on making clothing from 0’s count hand-spun cotton textiles that could easily transition from winter to spring wear aptly called ‘Transitionals’, which has been bestsellers among Indian and International clients. However, there was always an ask for woolens in winters. Call it our lethargy or lack of interest, because the wool made only 5-7% of our total sales, we would find it easier to source the woolen textiles from local khadi stores across Rajasthan rather than delve into researching & making it like we did for our cotton textiles. This changed for us during the early months of 2021 when India was under its third lockdown and one of our buyers from the Netherlands, who was keen on exploring a woolen range, got in touch with us for a collaboration. She wanted to explore wool that was sustainable and preferably indigenous. This got us thinking and instinctively the first place we thought of for working on wool was either Jammu & Kashmir or Himachal Pradesh. However, a quick google search on ‘the largest wool producing state’ not just proved how wrong we were in our instinct but also how ignorant we were. It was not a Himalayan state that was the largest wool producing state, but the one we were living in!

Rajasthan has been the largest wool producing state with highest contribution, which, is almost double of the second largest state- Jammu & Kashmir. This information came like a jolt that woke us from a slumber. Perhaps it had been the comfort of working with cottons that had made us fixated on refining our existing textiles that we never had thought of exploring other natural fibres. So, when the opportunity presented itself in the form of an international collaboration over exploring indigenous & sustainable wool, we jumped at it. We were still under lockdown but we started our research on the wool made in Rajasthan. We knew wool was made in Bikaner because that’s from where we had been sourcing for our winter collections, but a little digging left us disappointed. The wool we had been sourcing was Bharat Merino and not indigenous/desi wool. While this had never mattered in past, now it did, because if Rajasthan was the highest wool producing state, where was its indigenous wool? The question sent us on a journey that is ongoing and has been extremely enriching and rewarding. We learnt that India owns the third largest sheep population in the world, stands 6th amongst clean wool producer countries and 9th amongst greasy wool producers with Rajasthan ranking as the largest wool producing state. Yet, in Rajasthan itself the sheep population declined by 13 per cent from 9.1 million in 2012 to 7.9 million in 2019.* Historically, the state has been a wool hub, accounting for 40 per cent of all domestic production with most varieties of indigenous sheep breeds forming the backbone of this sector with the yield of Chokhla breed taking the lead by yielding upto 2.27kgs of wool per year. Incidentally Chokhla is also the only breed that yields fine wool which is touted as the Merino of India. Most of the other breeds yield thick and coarse wool which is mainly used in carpet &rug industry. Just 10 years ago, the Bikaner mandi was one of the largest wool markets in Asia. Sadly today, the mandi sells both wool and grain since the former alone is no longer sustainable. A recent study by the Centre for Pastoralism, an initiative of Gujarat-based non-profit Sahjeevan, finds that in the 10 years till 2020, wool consumption by the country’s processing units increased by 50 per cent, but the use of indigenous wool fell to almost 10 per cent of the total current sales in Bikaner. The reason? While the yarn is apt for rug & carpet making, its unavailability has become a challenge. The fact is, indigenous wool has for decades suffered at the hands of machine-friendly long-stapled wool (a cluster of the fibre of greater length). Around the late 1980s or early 1990s, import tariffs were lifted as India began importing long-stapled wool, especially Merino. And while the products became softer, the skill to make indigenous wool dwindled and so did the willingness to make it softer. As a result, today almost all small, medium & large-scale wool processing units are capable of processing Merino wool used for carpet making in Rajasthan. This roadblock left us with two challenges. One, to find resources to make indigenous wool and the second was to soften the coarse wool and make it apt for making clothing that would sell in both Indian & European markets.

We decided to start with sourcing yarn made from wool obtained from the Chokhla Sheep which is famous for its soft wool and found in parts of Rajasthan. We had been in touch with Rajasthan Khadi Sangh for our research and from there we came to know that they had a small lot of indigenous yarn available with them. During the lockdown, nomadic pastoralists were forced to suspend their travel. Belonging to a marginalized community, the Khadi Sangh had procured wool and then got it spun into yarn with local women spinners. We requested them to let us use it but they were skeptical of the quality. The wool was neither soft nor apt for making clothing. However, after a lot of persuasion and flow-up we could manage to get woven shawl lengths. The fabric was just amazing to see and hold. It certainly was no merino and yes it was prickly and coarse. But it had a certain softness and breathability to it. The fabric was loosely woven so it draped beautifully but even after wrapping it on the cottons we were wearing, we could feel the fiber picking on our skin. The fabric was beautiful but it could not be used in making a winter wear collection. We realized we needed to start at the fiber stage if we really wanted to have softer indigenous wool, but the clock was ticking and we had a collection to make. So, we decided to focus on softening the textile in hand and work on the fiber from scratch in the following year. Wool is inherently different than cotton (the fiber we were well versed with). Being a protein fiber (obtained from animals), it behaves in a drastically different manner than cotton which is a cellulose fiber (obtained from plants). To begin with the surface of woolen fiber is covered with scales. Its these scales that lend wool its insulating quality. However, it’s the same scale that also make the surface hydrophobic, which means it repels water. That’s why when water drops on wool, it floats like a dew drop before being absorbed by the interior of the fiber. Hence, while it takes time for wool to get wet, it starts to weigh down when it finally absorbs water. Also, wool has poor wet strength than cotton. In simple terms, the above mentioned translates to the fact that we could not process or finish the wool like we did for our cottons. Since Rajasthan had been favoring Bharat Merino over indigenous wool, there was hardly any setup that could help us in the softening the textile. The fabric that was made from Bharat Merino was often sent to Panipat and Ludhiana for further softening. This meant we again had to look outside the state for making this textile work. Having worked with KVIC as an empaneled designer in Jammu & Kashmir and as a consultant for Directorate of Handicrafts & Handlooms, we knew a few officials and departments that could help us resolve this issue and the first one that came to our mind was the Directorate of Animal Husbandry. Researchers & Scientists at Directorate of Animal Husbandry and at Central Sheep & Wool Research Institute spent hours over call patiently understanding our predicament about the prickliness in textiles. The problem had to be resolved at the fiber stage. They patiently explained the procedures required at every stage of wool processing along with, sheep care to ensure better quality wool. Since we already had textile in our hand, and not the sheep, we utilized our newly gained knowledge in adapting the processes to make the fabric softer. Mills in Panipat & Ludhiana use singeing process to burn out the excess fibers protruding on the textile surface to soften it. We decided to instead pamper the wool in gentler ways to soften and smoothen it, just like we often do with our hair, another animal protein fiber. This enable us to make the fabric soft enough for clothing, which we did and sold well in both the Netherlands and later in India. The collection garnered interest and soon Weavers Service Centre, Jaipur got interested in exploring wool at one of their clusters near Bikaner. Simultaneously, we also got in discussion with exploring woolen fiber with URMUL Seemant Samiti, which had also been working on wool in rural areas near Bikaner. We got together to use indigenous wool to make it into softer, apparel grade wool yarn as well as create new wool blends for varying usage. In February of 2022, we met the local nomadic pastoral communities of Rajasthan near Bikaner along with the URMUL team. The journey was not a long one but certainly very sandy. Even though it was early February, the morning sun was kind, it was not an easy ride. The route is laced with long patches of Photovoltaic power station or what is commonly called Solar Farms. And every time we passed one, the increased heat surrounding the farm would make us uneasy with its unusual warmth and glare radiating from its panels which were being automatically washed by water from revolving sprinklers. It would make sense for an arid region with abundant sunlight to have such farms, but the irony was two folds. One, these Solar farms were mostly created on common grazing lands that were originally used by the nomadic pastoralists for herding their sheep. Secondly, the resultant rise in temperature made the nearby area unusable for grazing. Indigenous wool is sustainable because it is an inherent part of the local ecosystem. In Jaisalmer in western Rajasthan, residents of 40 villages reportedly undertook a 225-km march in December to voice their concern for Orans, or sacred groves, that are biodiversity hotspots, which were classified as wastelands and allotted for setting up solar plants. The villagers demanded that these Orans should be declared as deemed forests in accordance with a 2018 Supreme Court order, so that the locals can graze their animals. It is an ironical tussle between local ecology and green energy. Classifying grasslands as ‘unproductive’ wastelands proves detrimental to these biodiversity hotspots that also support pastoral and agro-pastoral communities.** Add to this the ongoing climate crisis with extreme weathers and lack of water and one can understand the reasons for shrinking pastoral communities. Though the cluster for procuring woolen fiber had been identified, we also faced an existential question on how green energy was not so green when it curbed the growth of age old indigenous rural ecosystems. Together with URMUL team, which has been tirelessly working on ground with local communities, we worked on refining the woolen yarn and currently are working on making softer apparel grade indigenous woolen blends. While the work on wool continues, we are far from making an impact. How does one help indigenous communities grow when there is no data on the number of pastoralists in the country, thereby affecting the planning and policy process related to the community? How can common grazing lands and biodiversity hotspots be saved from being labelled wastelands so as not to end up as Solar farms? How to rebuild resources for processing indigenous wool when most setups can only process Bharat Merino and Merino wool blends? And most importantly, how to impart knowledge on the importance of preserving these indigenous communities and processes? We may not have the answers, but firmly believe that even a small change can go a long way in preserving what is slipping from our hands. We may not be able to make pronounced changes but by collaborating with similar goal-oriented organizations, we can help the resilient pastoralists of the Thar. References: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1357166/india-wool-production-share-by-major-state/ * https://scroll.in/article/1044267/in-western-rajasthan-the-pastoralist-way-of-life-is-under-severe-threat ** Journey of Wool [gallery ids="197912,197930,197922,197927,197923,197925,197926,197921,197924,197913,197914,197915,197916,197919,197920,197917,197918,197928,197929"]

Over 300 weavers gathered in Chirala (AP) in November for a 7-day meet on “Rethinking Indian Industrialization of Crafts”, organized by REEDS (a Hyderabad-based NGO), Handloom Futures Trust, the National Federation for Handloom and Handicrafts, Maastricht University and the University of Leiden. Participants came from twelve states and Thailand, Taiwan, China and Laos. Some travelled four days and nights, all carrying looms and spinning wheels. A weavers’ camp set up at a school drew the local community to a unique sharing of knowledge and hope. Indigo vats were installed by Indian and Thai dyers. A display by Registry of Sarees showcased 200 years of khadi experience. Curator Mayank brought 24 pieces of exquisite fabric gathered from across the country. Translators and scholars were on hand at workshops and discussion which reflected the capacity of artisans to absorb from one another across all barriers. An Andhra weaver learned intricate weaving techniques from Laos. Weavers from Kutch demonstrated the importance of wool within the handloom scenario, while another from Chhattisgarh resolved problems in dyeing Uttarakhand nettle yarn through exchanges with Jagada Rajappa (Hyderabad) and weaver Tang Wen Chun (Taiwan). A year of meticulous planning unfolded effortlessly along Chirala’s magnificent shore, the sea a metaphor of timelessness. Old As The ‘New-New’ And Other Findings Weaver interactions were a backdrop to two days of discussion, bringing together weavers and scholars from around the globe on issues of craft and pedagogy, law, labour, livelihood and future directions. The invitation included some head-spinners: explorations would take place “of 4-E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enacted) in the case of sciences, crafts and technologies”. Comparisons from ancient Greece and Rome with India suggested ways of ‘anchoring of innovation’ in history, with the past integrated into the future. Prof Ineke Sluiter (University of Leiden) recalled Socrates using craft to demonstrate knowledge, “making craft always morally good”. Prof Sluiter revealed that concepts of progress in the West are returning to the wisdom of antiquity -- “Old is the new-new”, a lesson perhaps in our struggle with the ‘sunset syndrome’ that has devastated our sector, and a reminder that the slogan we have made familiar – “The future is handmade” -- originated in the European Union fifteen years ago! Prof Wieber Bijker (Maastricht University and Norwegian University of Science & Technology) contrasted experiences in China and India. Handcrafts and artisans were attacked as decadent during China’s long history of upheaval and revolution. What was lost is now proving difficult to recover – a warning to India’s neglect of its incomparable craft resources. Historian Miko Flohr (University of Leiden) underlined what makes scholarship so critical: “The humanities offer innovative thinking that can contribute to sustainable economic development through the importance of understanding the social and economic roles of crafts like handloom weaving in their ecological context, and how crucial it is that the delicate balance between such crafts and the environment is not disturbed. This, in fact, should give these traditional crafts quite a special place in our thinking about sustainable economic development”. Dr Valentina Fava (Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic) suggested fresh business models that support sustainability rather than mass production. For her, marketing strategies based on value propositions must transcend short-term profitability, a point supported by Prof James Leach (CNRS France) in his call for understanding livelihoods as much more than income. Significantly, Prof Leach called for a reciprocal relationship between scholars and practitioners (my emphasis) “so that we can be partners in an ecology of process, and not just about production”. The importance of such partnerships was perhaps Chirala’s most significant signal. Prof Dorothy Ko (Columbia University) appealed to India to learn from China’s bitter experience rather than to blindly mimic growth models that entail huge human and environmental costs. The world is looking at India for another path of caring, and for a new value system based on sustainability and humanity rather than on greed. Chinese artisans today are eager to learn from India and to partner in building market opportunities in both countries and to drastically reduce dependence on western markets. Her appeal for collaboration offered a startling contrast to our image of China as a ruthless competitor, exporting factory-made rip-offs. Markets: Red Herrings or Sunrise Opportunities? Chirala’s focus was on scholar/artisan relationships. Fair enough. Yet without market activists as key players, how can change be achieved in any new arrangement? Despite discussions around critical experiences such as Malkha cotton in Andhra and Kala cotton in Kutch, there was comparatively little space at Chirala for understanding Indian experience in craft development, or the current crisis of neglect. The centrality of users in the handloom discourse was left as an assumption rather than as a responsibility for creating a public willingness to pay for handmade quality, and to achieve this by responding to new needs and aspirations. Chirala highlighted a disturbing reality that for some scholars the way markets work (and therefore the way some of us work) reduces artisans to passive subjects, exploited as skilled labour rather than respected as keepers of wisdom. In its “Rethinking Industrialization of Crafts”, the term ‘industrialization’ was understood primarily as machine-driven challenges. Yet handcraft is India’s second largest industry, and the re-thinking that engages many of us is that of recognizing handcraft as a gigantic Indian industry, deserving attention, respect and investment in its own right and on its own terms – with the artisan at the centre. Exploitation is a familiar reality through appalling income-levels and working conditions that prevail. For change, market demand must finally deliver both respect and a quality of life to artisans through recognition of handmade value, away from prevailing mentalities of buying cheap. This change is what CCI and partners have fought to achieve. For us empowerment comes not only from artisan pride in heritage but also from her capacity to negotiate and to influence what happens in the marketplace. In the words of Prof Leach “People choose things for many reasons, and price is one factor. Another is quality and also perceived quality …. Something that we might call aura or the intangible aspect of quality that includes reputation, knowledge, and the desire of the purchaser to identify with or be included in an image of themselves…” The mission of KAMALA emerged in Uzramma’s example of Malkha cotton (high quality at affordable prices) to interpret the marketplace as an arena where alternatives and options should demonstrate “markets that come after ideas in the head” and emerge as enabling, rather than as domineering, spaces. Scholars, Scholarship and Us While collaboration between academics and artisans was suggested to make multiple values apparent, Chirala left questions for those -- neither scholars nor artisans -- who work in and through markets. Are we suffering an identity crisis that is making us invisible? Have we failed to emerge as ‘scholars’ of another kind, in our own right, by experience if not by qualification? Why is what we do not top-of-mind although founded on action research, testing and responding to the real needs of makers and users? Does our evidence lack rigour? Is our documentation inadequate? Do we fear discussions that can fly way above our heads? (I never did fathom what ‘explorations of 4-E cognition’ was all about!) Does this situation mirror the earlier absence of economists and managers as craft partners? What might all this mean in terms of building the capacity of craft teams, of resources needed for research and publication, of opportunities required to bring minds together for reflection and partnership? How can scholars join as peers and partners to help test assumptions and findings and to enrich outcomes? The value of such teamwork has been established. Consider the seminal “Bamboo & Cane Crafts” of the northeast by the NID team led by M P Ranjan, our own projects and exhibitions (including Stone Crafts of India, Chamba rumals, and the Hyderabad exploration of natural dyes) and those of others: Martand Singh’s Viswakarma, DakshinaChitra’s concept of re-creating craft environments, pastoral cultures demonstrated by Sahjeevan, Rajeev Sethi’s showcasing of Indian creativity at Mumbai’s new airport, and Judy Frater’s path-breaking experiments in Kutch. Inter-disciplinary scholarship has been the foundation for every one of these. CCI partners have included scholars of distinction: Lotika Varadarajan, Jasleen Dhamija and Jyotindra Jain are among them. Through the Craft Revival Trust, Ritu Sethi has regularly brought activists and scholars together around shared concerns and priorities. Sahapedia and IGNCA have offered other opportunities, while Uzramma (Malkha) and Annapurna Mamidipudi (Max Planch Institute for the History of Science) have helped transform our understanding of Chirala’s inspiration: the place of the weaver and her loom in a new millennium. Today scholars and activists are uninvited to tables of decision-making -- one for residing in ivory towers and the other as purveyors of craft myths. Chirala made clear both the need as well as opportunities for change through fresh arguments and fresh evidence. Scholars are needed for both, and should surely be the first to understand what we do and why we do it. Consider three examples from our Newsletter: debates on intellectual property and on geographic indicators, and that infamous jacket displayed at the V&A which raised issues of ethics, technology and cultural sensitivity. What this suggests is the need for conscious nurturing of scholarship as a resource, integrated into work and advocacy, and for ensuring that knowledge from the ground and from the top is brought together in a common cause. The Past As Future “Chirala demonstrated that we can unite academic knowledge and the knowledge of artisanal practitioners to recollect sustainable economies and products of great beauty … adapted to modern lifestyles”. Our mission, wonderfully endorsed by Prof Ulinka Rublack (Cambridge University) who described Chirala as “one of the most inspiring conferences I have ever attended”. Significant opportunities emerged through Prof Wiebe Bijker’s summary of Chirala achievements: the centrality of India-China exchange, the technological sophistication of weavers and other artisans, their need for self-worth, the importance of a new politics to replace welfare approaches with fresh understanding of crafts as an engine of livelihood as well as a unique and powerful response to the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Chirala also recalled our Santiniketan gathering in 2016, and what we learned there of the beginnings of our movement a century ago through Rabindranath Tagore’s decision to position craft revival within a university, re-defined as a space for embracing universal wisdom and for demonstrating the contemporary relevance of humankind’s heritage. The past and the future seamlessly bound – Gurudev’s mission in 1919 and Chirala’s message today.

Thoughts on The Vanishing Ghaghra

Chippas - from block printers to entrepreneurs

Artisanal Production -The Third Millennium

FROM LOOMS TO THE FIELDS

A STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS By Uzramma