The Voice of Fashion
For new visitors and returning ones, trade textiles from the TAPI collection unlock India’s past as an aesthetic conglomerate. The current show at Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum reiterates their profundity
A day before the exhibition ‘When Indian Flowers Bloomed in Distant Lands’ from the TAPI collection formally opened at Ahmedabad’s Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum, I had the opportunity to visit, even as the final touches were being given to the notations and mounts. The museum’s matriarch Jayshree Lalbhai’s generosity in accommodating my request (for logistic reasons), opened for me, in retrospect, a curative time.
Before elaborating on the “curative”, first the facts. Curated by Deepika Shah, director of the TAPI (Textiles and Art of the People of India) collection, the show focusses on ‘Masterworks of Trade Textiles’ from 1250-1950. A total of 71 works in two categories—textiles traded to the East and those to the West are displayed here. They echo the voice of TAPI’s soul enshrined in the commitment of its founder-nurturers Shilpa and Praful Shah—that these rare creations should not be forgotten in their homeland.
As the exhibition note states, the textiles spanning 700 years “reveal the remarkable history and diversity of Indian cloth, the ingenuity of its traders and entrepreneurs, and above all, the creative genius of weavers, dyers, painters and embroiderers, who enabled India to clothe the world.”
East and West: Minus the Clichés
The gallery devoted to the East, labelled ‘Patterns of Prestige’ shows Indian cloths from Gujarat, Bengal and the Coromandel Coast that were traded to Sri Lanka, Burma (now Myanmar), Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Japan. They include hand-printed, hand-painted, woven textiles that stood for wealth and status, some used as gift exchanges for political and social relations. Indian textiles were also pertinent in life cycle ceremonies in these countries, from funerary rites to births and marriages. This gallery is dominated by the elaborately designed patolas of Gujarat and the ingenious grammar of tie-dye weaving. Other mordant and resist dyed cottons with narrative themes can be seen here too.
Patolu trousers from Gujarat in the early 1900s traded to Indonesia. This particular pair is believed to have belonged to the family of Sultan Hamengku Buwono VIII of Jogjakarta (Yogyakarta).
Across the other section is ‘Designs on the World—The Indian Textile Trade to the West’. From delicate muslins for the wealthy to hardy textiles for soldiers’ uniforms, tents and awnings, another world opens up. Historical references surge about imports to Rome, the dominance of the Portuguese in trade, followed by Dutch, British and French—from spices to textiles.
What gets emphasised is that Indian textiles were prized and profitable to the West. While in the East, they were revered and glorified.
Curative Musings
Selections from the TAPI collection have been seen before. A book by Dutch historian Ebeltje Hartkamp-Jonxis, titled When Indian Flowers Bloomed in Europe: Masterworks of Indian Trade Textiles (Niyogi Books, 2023) coincided with a previous outing at CSMVS museum in Mumbai last year. Whereas ‘Masters of the Cloth: Indian Textiles Traded to Distant Shores’ with a catalogue of the same name summed up an exhibition at the National Museum, Delhi in 2005. All exhibitions have scored on the significance and distinction of these textiles. Not every exposition stirs similar responses though. As visitors respond to them through the marvel they feel as spectators. Exhibition design, venue, curatorial placement, gallery lights and natural light, information—several compositions layer the experience.
The European Market Shawl from Kashmir traded to Europe between 1845-1850. The shawl has been meticulously crafted from five separately woven parts: two hashiyas (side borders), two zanjirs (end borders), and a white centre matan.
For my felt experience about TAPI at the Lalbhai Museum, I use the word ‘curative’ instead of restorative, perhaps because that week, I had been (over) reading, British analyst Adam Phillips’s book On Getting Better. It is a reflection on the search for a “better” life—at least in one’s mind. The other reason was that apart from a few discreet observations by a TAPI representative present at the venue and Chandni Roy from the team at Lalbhai Museum, who added many warm smiles, the solitary nature of my walkthrough stormed ideas. These sometimes get drowned when one walks in groups or crowds with a guide.
The Chintz Panel from 1720-1740 (a fragment of Palampore). Traded from the Coromandel Coast to Europe.
That bare fact is: one felt “better”. The recurring feeling was a mix of the predictable awe for the hand-skills of India’s artisans coupled with a mysterious fascination for India’s antiquated past. This pull of pastness, felt a bit like a dream state, nudged by design. For instance, the colours of chintz textiles—deep blues, burgundy reds, moss greens—of meandering vines and flower bouquets on a mid-18th Century chintz petticoat from the Coromandel Coast for the Dutch market. Another an 18th Century piece found in Indonesia, a resist and mordant dyed Palampore fragment with Chinoiserie patterns—showing a lady (Oriental interpretation) sitting in a bamboo grove adjusting the flowers in her hair while looking at the mirror. Below her, a row of gun-wielding Dutchmen and another dimension on the same textile narrating through a view of nobility at a lakeside. All details are hand block printed in dyes that have not faded through centuries. Parrots and red flowers, regal Kashmir paisleys, pashminas holding secrets of times gone by, woven cottons, diaphanous muslins that are nowhere around us in current life—never mind the hundred “revivals”, remind you that what once was, may never be again. A fundamental truth of life.
The Men’s Wrappers. Traded from the Coromandel Coast to Kalabari, West Africa in the early to mid 20th century.
In the West gallery, a white and black Barber cloth, a square piece with fine floral hand block printing and embroidered detail in black used like a bib before shaving or for a haircut, was riveting. On the East side, a piece titled ‘Heirloom Textile of Ladies with Parrots’ spoke seduction. Block painted and resist dyed and dated from 1430-1530 CE, it is a large, horizontal piece in black and red dyes on a beige-natural cotton. An excerpt from the notation might explain my fascination: “Twelve lavishly attired and bejewelled female figures, accompanied by a smaller attendant, make up this scene of dancers and musicians. The third figure…stands out being larger than the rest and possibly representing the matriarch…The presence of parrots feeding on mangoes which carry erotic connotations in Indian literary and visual arts suggests these women may be courtesans.”
What gets emphasised is that Indian textiles were prized and profitable to the West.
The subjects of these works, the contours of flower petals on court hangings, the delicate embroidery (so fine that it seemed like print) the geometric patterns on Madras cloth that was called ‘Injiri’ by the Kalabaris of Niger Delta in South Eastern Nigeria, belong to eras that only live in its remnants like these. Yet these ideas seeded how communities wear, how artists and artisans think even today. They symbolise the hope that human skills remain locked in a never-ending continuity over centuries of life-cycles.
‘When Indian Flowers Bloomed in Distant Lands’ is a must-see if you believe that observing old textiles is therapeutic. It can make you feel “better”.
