A new gallery curated by The Registry of Sarees at Raw Collaborative seeds a study to locate how contemporary stakeholders narrate design history in textiles

Where first feelings go, Sense & Sensibilities invites you to a way of seeing. Of seeing textile design from a position of curiosity as well as familiarity. The “sense” of reassuring belief that design, an inexhaustible aesthetic of continuity and newness, can move you with its powerful relevance if you pay attention. It is a vibe that envelopes you. It emanates perhaps from ochre walls, the natural textures and colours of hanging silks, the extensive use of fibre installations in exhibition design, the juxtaposition of decadent materials with the very simple like jute and hemp. The material versatility asks for attention and architecture holds pride of place.

Last week, Bengaluru-based The Registry of Sarees, headed by Ally Matthan, launched a new gallery at Raw Collaborative, an event that celebrates Indian design which is currently on its sixth edition. Held at the Mahatma Mandir convention centre in Gandhinagar, the Sense & Sensibilities gallery—named to metaphorically convey the “emotional and the rational” responses to design, as Matthan puts it— seeds a new study on the history of design through textiles. The intent is to start a “knowledge registry to address concerns that are economical, environmental, sociological.”

It will explore the textile landscape of the Indian subcontinent, retold through contemporary stakeholders. The voices of scholars and historians surge in design history but those of new entrants to Indian textile practice stay in the background. This is an attempt to find and present those visions.

Curated by a team of three, led by museologist Aayushi Jain with spatial design by Vishwesh Kurwe and Radha Parulekar, this first exposition brings in 36 stakeholders. These are fashion designers, textile artists, architecturally inclined creators, rafoogars (darners) and artisans. Several iterations that build on this one, will unfold at the gallery over the next two years. Each with a quest to find interdisciplinary approaches that have rested and bristled inside textile design, the craft that sits at their core, the skills that have shaped it. Through materiality, skill and processes used by contemporary stakeholders, Sense & Sensibilities aims to narrate political, historic, art and cultural movements of India—uncovering “Indian design” long before that labelling was used. Then push that inquisitiveness to explore how technology and the machine revolution changed design inside out, be it in production, demand or creative expression.

Diverse Voices, Curation by Design

The vibe you feel here perhaps comes from how diverse stakeholders have presented their work here. As Jain guides visitors through a walk, she first alerts attention towards long, unstitched pieces of fabric—silks like eri, muga, tussar which, in a manner, speak up as protagonists of the history of textiles. From there on, it becomes an immersive experience with photographs to notations through India’s freedom movement, ajrakh block printing, extra weft textiles from Kutch, vintage carpets, complex ikats, patchwork, embroidery and architectural points of view expressed in books, cinematic expressions, interior design and wearable pieces.

Like the undulating fabrics used on the ceiling as an element of spatial design—a signature idea that extends from previous textile presentations by The Registry of Sarees—several chapters open up.

There is a representation of Gyasar brocades that were produced in the 19th century, from Haseen Mohammad of HM Textiles, Banaras. There is textile art by visual thinker and textile maker Jayshree Poddar, and another by Ashita Singhal of Paiwand studio. An arresting corner by designer brand Abraham & Thakore, monochrome in visual thought but representative of multiple textile practices, extends a seductive pull. Among the most powerful renditions here are the wall art and furniture pieces by Aratrik Dev Varman’s Tilla, from his first ever interiors project titled ‘Seven Indian Trees’ that he conceptualised in 2013. Then there is the work of Vinay Narkar, who specialises in textiles of the Deccan. Narkar’s is a contemporary take on the three shuttle technique of making woven contrast borders.

Assamese designer and artist Jagrity Phukan, raised in the village of Dhemaji on the banks of the Brahmaputra, starts her expressive address to the visitors by saying “We Grow Our Clothes”. She talks about the legacy of her grandfather, and the “seeds he sowed everywhere”. Her work ‘The Inheritance of Nature’, an ode also to her native community, is silken, golden, nurturing, preserving in its impact.

‘Sense & Sensibilities’ centres design, it nudges eras and mindsets, tracing a link from the individual to the collective. From Kishkinda Trust founder Shama Pawar’s banana fibre, ilkal pallu yarn, cotton and silk installations and Manchaha rugs designed by artisans “as they wished” (man-chaha) enabled by Jaipur Rugs or Design ni Dukan renditions of textile screens for light and shade…the show’s narrative impulses are democratic and unshackled.

When The Cows Come Home

Dusk or ‘godhuli’ as it is poetically termed in Hindi, the hour when the cows come home, brings an informal baithak urged by Mathan, to ask: why document? The baithak has casual visitors and experts, teachers and storytellers. “Documentation for its own sake is important and relevant. People will find their own meanings and spin-offs if there is documentation after all,” says Mala Sinha, co-founder of Bodhi, Vadodara’s revered textile studio. Several voices emerge, on how design enriches our lives, how the market makes product-relevant decisions introducing inflection points in the creative and manufacturing movements.

In the fabric-textiles-art-craft renaissance that has captured the India of now, a restoration almost of things and ideas lost, it is also about showing up for what you believe in as a practitioner or even a preacher. Time for institutes, collectives, writers, curators, patrons, artists—to show up. By design, with emotion and rationality. Like Sense & Sensibilities aims to do.

And as a philosophic saying goes, “If you gain, you gain everything. If you lose, you lose nothing.”