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The curators of a colossal exhibition at Londons Victoria and Albert Museum on teasing out the complex, rich, and incredibly
diverse history of Indian textiles
2226
Shefalee Vasudev
A textile fragment with a stylized leaves pattern from the Ashmolean museum, UK.
Photographs Courtesy Victoria & Albert Museum, London
There must be more ways to tell the story of India than its historians and social and cultural anthropologists together can narrate.
Can the tale of this nation with its complex conflictseconomic, religious, political and societaleven be told? And if it must,
what is that one tool of enquiry that can help express and explain a nation?
For Londons Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), that tool is fabric. Using Indias fabrics to explore its essence, the museum is
launching an exhibition, Fabric Of India, next week with more than 200 pieces on display. Supported by design house Good Earth,
the exhibition is curated by Rosemary Crill and Divia Patel, both from V&As Asian department. It has been designed by Gitta
Gschwendtner.
On display will be historical objects such as the mammoth 58 sq. m cloth tent with chintz designs used by Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan
from the 18th century, ancient ceremonial banners, sacred cloths, Mughal hunting jackets, textiles lost and found; from the earliest
fragments of Indias handmade textiles to contemporary saris.
Mounted as a part of V&As ongoing India Festival, which marks 25 years of the museums Nehru Gallery and of the Nehru Trust
for Indian Collections, which encourages the preservation, study and display of Indias art and cultural heritage, the exhibition
showcases craft processes, religious practices and commercial conundrums encoded in fabrics. From dyeing, weaving and printing
techniques, threads, handmade traditions, the interpretation of chintz for European markets, the adaptation to exports that affected
handloom production, the threat of industrialization, the resistance to it during the British rule in India, the life and times of Khadi,
and sacred fabrics, such as a 16th century Islamic talismanic shirt with verses from the Quran inscribed in gold on it, to modern
fashion creations by designers, including Manish Arora, Rahul Mishra, Aneeth Arora, Sanjay Garg, Abraham & Thakore and Rajesh
Pratap Singhit is a comprehensive map of Indias textile history and contemporary times. It also includes a piece of couture from
Bollywood, the mirrorwork lehnga, by the designer duo Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla, worn by Madhuri Dixit-Nene for the
promotions of the 2002 filmDevdas.
Shefalee Vasudev