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A recently published volume aims to establish the astonishing range and
Even that day returns, when, some years ago, in the course of a meeting of the Acquisition Committee of the Crafts Museum in Delhi, a dealer brought in a bolt of Dhaka muslin, offering it for sale. The mere mention of Dhaka had made us all sit up: it was as if, suddenly, a breath of history had entered the room; and old descriptions of fabrics of gossamer lightness, which once bore names like aab-e rawaan (‘running water’), shabnami (‘dewdrop’), and baaft hawa (‘woven air’) knocked at the mind, at least mine. Delicately, very delicately, the bolt was unrolled and all of us felt, gently, the fabric between our fingers. I can still remember that texture, that light-as-air sensation. In this context, then, the pleasure that a recently published volume like Rapture, which explores the Art of Indian Textiles, yields is palpable. Even more so because it is authored by Rahul Jain, who is not only a textile researcher and technician of distinction but also someone who seems to know the soul of Indian textiles.
Consider, for instance, the manner in which, at the very opening, he leads the reader into his world. "Textiles differ in important ways", he says, "from all other manufactured objects". For, above all else, "a textile is a sensual material that is held in close proximity to the human body. Its texture, weight, and dimensionality, even at their subtlest, exert a powerful sensation upon skin". And then, goes on to add how the physical properties of textiles deserve as much attention as their visual qualities of pattern and colour. "At their finest", he says, "Indian textiles, whether of cotton, silk or wool, offered an unparalleled sensory experience: cotton muslins that were woven to the thinness of air and that flowed over the body as would water; dye-painted chintzes glazed like polished parchment; tapestry-patterned wool worked to the thinness and translucency of silk; and metallic tissues calendered to resemble beaten gold and silver." These were all the work of India’s unsung textile artisans, who could transform the ordinary. Magically. There are more than 80 extraordinary objects assembled in the volume which moves, like a soft-footed nayika, through the world of resists and mordants, metal threads and gold stamps, block prints and patterned silks, samite weaves and lampa pieces. But seldom, if ever, the end is lost sight of. When a cotton sari featuring trees with birds, understated but so extraordinarily complex, possibly from Karuppur in the South, features here, we hear, on the one hand, how this kind of textile ‘depended on an intimate collaboration between the jamdani weaver and the kalamkari artist and dyer’, or how they had to ‘work together on a pre-determined design format as well as on the patterns that would be fitted into it’, and on the other how objects such as these, produced for the Maratha princes, who ruled over Tanjore, were given away as ‘khillats’ to their generals and allies, and how Karuppur saris and turbans were reportedly worn for royal weddings. Consistently the aim is to establish the astonishing range and dazzling quality of our textiles but also place them in a context. In doing this, a bewildering assortment of collections is drawn upon, from time-honoured institutions in Ahmedabad and Surat in India to museums in London and Washington and Basel, and on to privately owned objects in New Delhi and Copenhagen. Pieces woven in India, found in Tibet and now in an Arab museum figure here as much as those that were produced under the eyes of the great Vaishnava saint, Shankaradeva, for enveloping the sacred book in the sattras of Assam; lotuses, serpents and love-poems woven into a silk sari patterned with weft ikat jostle against temple cloths in which gopis, limned with gold tinsel, gather in a forest waiting for Krishna to appear. There are fragments of stencilled wall hangings and velvet tent panels, quilts and coverlets and canopies and floor coverings; the Dutch appear here wandering in a South Indian wonderland; Chinese men and women move through red mansions; the simplest of folkish cottons are juxtaposed against the lush complexity of imperial silks. But each time, as Rahul presents them, it is not the intricacies of technique — whether of the great patolas from Gujarat or the Vrindavani vastras from Kamarupa — that are allowed to take over: everything is placed in an historical setting; and where that context is not precisely known, speculations are made and questions raised. Patterns, weaves, materials, pigments, imagery, source, provenance: everything is gathered and arranged as if in a bouquet for the reader to take home while savouring its sight and smelling its fragrance on the way. There are regrettably no
paintings in the volume that could have served to emphasise the use of
these objects or to point further to their context. Except for one, a
very telling one, which serves as a frontispiece: a 19th century folio
from Mewar. In an elaborate outdoor setting, surrounded by tents and
qanats, with crowds of nobles and soldiers and retainers milling
around, the Maharana of Mewar, Jawan Singh, is seen seated with the
then Governor General of India, Lord William Bentinck, sitting on a
chair facing him. All kinds of dignitaries — sardars of the realm
and officers of the Company — are ranged on all sides, all gravely
sitting on European chairs. But in the centre of the ‘reception
space’, on glistening white sheets, are prominently placed, in neat
rows, piles of a glittering range of colourful textiles: evidently the
Maharana’s only presents for the visiting dignitary. Nothing else,
no object of exchange or gift appears in sight.
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