Preamble
For your convenience, I have listed the other post in this series:
Traditional Indian Textiles - Part I
Introduction [1]
One of the fundamental reasons for the continuing success of Indian textile manufacturing, over the centuries, has been its ability to cope with a broad range of market demands. Indian weavers, dyers and embroiderers have been guided by the marketplace and more recently by government craft societies to produce textiles that might be best described as being constructed for the market place.
Bengali women arrayed in jamdani and brocade saris.
The flexibility with production, combined with the energy of a largely traditional Indian craft society, has resulted in the outpouring of textiles with an enormous variety of colors, patterns and textures.
Woman block-printing yardage in Jodhpor, Rajasthan (India).
Of all the textile crafts, the crafts people in India have brought the act of dyeing to a high level art form. Whether it is mastering the art of natural dyes or applying synthetic dyes to color cloth, the Indian crafters have led the way.
Freshly printed textile being washed in the Sabarmati river, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.
Chemical dyes are now used on all types of yarn as they are relatively easy to handle, are cheap, encompass a vast array of color and moreover, permit land to be released for more useful and/or natural purposes and so are blind to the vagaries of weather and climate change. However, if not handled safely or disposed of in an environmentally safe manner, they can also cause complications.
North Indian portrait of a man and a boy wearing Kashmir shawls with resist-dyed turbans.
Traditional Indian Textiles - Part II
'Gulladan' (a silk turban length) Made of warp-laced brocade, worn by bridegrooms of the Maldhari cattle-trading castes in Sind, Banni Kutch and western Rajasthan. Multan, west Punjab, is the only surviving production center. They were formerly woven in Sind.
Sindhi 'bandana' (tie-and-dyed) odhni, worn by the women of the Meghwal leather-workers caste of That Parkar, and made by the Hindu Khatri dyers of Khipro Sangar, Sind.
The above three cloth pieces are block-printed cloth lengths from Jodhpur or Zjaisalmer, Rajasthan, and Deesa, Gujarat, India.
Single- and double-ikat sari in the Orissan style, but woven at Masulipatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
Single-ikat bedsheet of cotton, from Nuapatna, Orissa (India).
'Tangalia' (wooden loin cloth) worn by the women of the Bhanwad herders of Saurashtra, India.
Reference:
[1] Traditional Indian Textiles, John Gillow and Nicholas Barnard, Thams and Hudson, London (1993) ISBN 0-500-27709-5.
For your convenience, I have listed the other post in this series:
Traditional Indian Textiles - Part I
Introduction [1]
One of the fundamental reasons for the continuing success of Indian textile manufacturing, over the centuries, has been its ability to cope with a broad range of market demands. Indian weavers, dyers and embroiderers have been guided by the marketplace and more recently by government craft societies to produce textiles that might be best described as being constructed for the market place.
The flexibility with production, combined with the energy of a largely traditional Indian craft society, has resulted in the outpouring of textiles with an enormous variety of colors, patterns and textures.
Of all the textile crafts, the crafts people in India have brought the act of dyeing to a high level art form. Whether it is mastering the art of natural dyes or applying synthetic dyes to color cloth, the Indian crafters have led the way.
Chemical dyes are now used on all types of yarn as they are relatively easy to handle, are cheap, encompass a vast array of color and moreover, permit land to be released for more useful and/or natural purposes and so are blind to the vagaries of weather and climate change. However, if not handled safely or disposed of in an environmentally safe manner, they can also cause complications.
Traditional Indian Textiles - Part II
Reference:
[1] Traditional Indian Textiles, John Gillow and Nicholas Barnard, Thams and Hudson, London (1993) ISBN 0-500-27709-5.
No comments:
Post a Comment