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Event Focus: Devi Art Foundation Presents ‘Fracture – Indian Textiles, New Conversations’
Fracture is not a break. It is a continuation and a cycle, of tradition, which itself is ongoing and ever evolving. Drawing from India’s rich handloom and textile tradition, the Devi Art Foundation spearheaded by Lekha and Anupam Poddar, alongwith three co-curators – textile curator Mayank Mansingh Kaul, designer Sanjay Garg and textile author and…
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The Handloom Sector Needs Your Help
Handlooms are India’s unique heritage and the livelihood of lakhs of skilled handloom weavers. A move is on to repeal The Handloom Reservation Act, which since 1985 has been protecting traditional Handloom weaves, especially saris, from being copied by their machine-made and powerloom competitors. It was a small but important protection for Handloom weavers, who otherwise…
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A Date with Design and More at Windmill Design Festival 2015
Over the last few years, the studios of Windmill Interiors and Pradeep Sachdeva Design Associates (PSDA) at Aya Nagar on the Delhi-Haryana border have become the focus of a creative community that often drops in to share an idea, collaborate or simply talk over a cup of coffee. The Windmill Festival celebrates this friendship and…
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The Geometric Genius of Toda Tribal Embroidery
This red and black play on cloth is an embroidery so fine that it looks like weaving. Toda embroidery created by the Toda tribe inhabiting the Niligiris, is reversible and they consider the rougher underside of the fabric as the ‘right’ side. The Todas are a small pastoral community who live on the isolated Nilgiri…
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The Embroidery of Life: Needle Crafts and Colors of Kutch
Amidst the barren desert landscape of the western border towns of India, smatterings of color are a representation of life, appearing as adornments on the bodies of the beautiful tribes. Embroidery, here, is not a glorious vocation but part of the daily fabric of how a day is spent. It isn’t uncommon to walk among…
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The Vankars of Bhujodi
The festive vibrance of embroidered textiles is the natural show stealer within Kutch textiles, but the subtler, elegant outcome from the rhythmic clacking of Bhujodi’s Vankar family of weavers is not far behind in appeal. The Vankars or weavers of Kutch weave colorful threads on the loom, with the yarn coming from Bhujodi, Ludhiana, Rajasthan…
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Commitment to Kashmir: Nature Bazaar’s Winter Mela
In between our love for handicrafts and the Delhi winters, we decided to explore the flavor of the month- the Kashmir Festival at Winter Mela, Dastkaar Nature Bazaar. Brought to Delhi by the people of Kashmir to celebrate the spirit of the valley, the colorful and vibrant bazaar saw various handicrafts of India on one platform…
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The Nomad Lyric: Embroidered Textiles from Kashmir’s Gujjar Bakarwal Tribe
The river Lidder that flows through majestic mountains and meadows near Pahalgam in Kashmir had earlier this year taken on a ferocious form, threatening all life that breeds alongside its banks. But before nature played truant, perhaps in just retaliation against man, a community of nomadic tribesmen began to migrate southwards from their camps at…
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Purkal Stree Shakti Samiti: Empowering Lives in a Himalayan Hamlet
In a rural village outside Dehradun known as Purkal, located in the foothills of the Himalayas, a society has dedicated their resources to enhancing the lives of the disadvantaged women of the Community by empowering them. Purkal Stree Shakti Samiti (PSSS) defines itself as ‘an organisation for empowering the women of Purkal’. Many families in the area lack basic…
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Mashru Project by Raw Mango: Celebrating A Lost Legacy
The word ‘mashru’ comes from the Arabic word ‘shari’a’ that means ‘permitted by Islamic law’, an allusion to the prohibition of wearing pure silk fabrics by Muslim men, citing laws in the Quran that restrains luxury in their lifestyle. Mashru is a mixed fabric composed of a smooth silk surface and soft cotton backing, thus making…
Storytellers of Wonder 