Textile treasure trove unearthed

As far as treasure hunts go, this yielded a whopper of a bounty samples of fabrics that one had only heard of, tucked away inside 18 volumes of an extensive omnibus. Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay & Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey flip through the pages of the exciting discovery.

The almirah in an obscure corner of the Botanical Survey of India (BSI) building had been locked for ages. When BSI deputy director Dr H S Debnath had it opened recently, all he could spot at first were rows and rows of hard-bound dusty books. Then, he opened one of them and a treasure tumbled out.
The book was part of the 18-volume omnibus: Textiles Manufactures and Costumes of the People of India. It stood on the dusty shelf with a 15-volume companion set on natural dyes and 700 samples of Indian textiles in silk, cotton, muslin and wool. Together, the two sets possibly form the most comprehensive document on traditional Indian textiles and weaves. The information would be enough to impact our understanding of Indian loom craft, felt historians. In a world going crazy over Indian weaves and stitch patterns, designers said it should influence the dynamics of the fashion industry.

"The fascinating part is that many of the lost arts can now be revived with the help of the omnibus. It is fashionable to say these days that handloom is a sunset industry. But the livelihood of millions still depends on handloom. The revival of some of these designs and styles can turn handloom into a sunrise industry. This is perhaps the greatest catalogue of Indian textiles and it reveals fascinating facts. For example, all of us know about chikan from Lucknow. But the document reveals that Dhaka was also a major centre for chikankari craft," said Kasturi Gupta Menon, retired IAS officer and president of the Crafts Council of India.

The omnibus was compiled by John Forbes Watson while he held the post Reporter on the Products of India in the 1850s. He finished work on the 18-volume series in 1866. Today, Forbes is universally recognized as the pioneer in studying Indian textiles. Thirteen out of 20 sets of the 18-volume omnibus of Textiles Manufactures and Costumes were sent to English textile manufacturing towns such as Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Macclesfield, Preston and to the South Kensington Museum (now Victoria Albert Museum). One set was retained in Kolkata, while six were sent to Allahabad, Bombay, Karachi, Madras, Nagpur and Lahore.

"Since none of the other sets, except the one at BSI, has seen light of day, we will be patenting it. It has tremendous commercial potential. We already have some good proposals. BSI can earn a lot by selling the copyrights of each textile design," said BSI director

Dr M Sanjappa. The paper sheets, on which the pieces of cloth are mounted, have become very brittle, but the colours and texture of vegetable or natural dyes are as bright as they were 200 years ago.

Debnath spoke on how he discovered the volumes accidentally. "I was taking stock of things strewn all over the building. I found this almirah under lock and key and had it opened. Inside, I found these huge books. When I studied them, I was so struck by the exhaustive compilation that for days together I just kept reading them to assess their importance. It was clear that the books were a treasure trove," he said.

According to Debnath, many of the textiles and designs have been lost for ever. "The muslin creations like Abrawan (running water), Shubham (evening dew) Nayansook (eye-soother), Jungle Khassa, Dooreea, Charkanu and Tunzeb can never be brought back in these this modern times. Our craftsman have lost the art. That is why I'm working hard to conserve and digitize this priceless body of work. The purpose of preparing these volumes was to promote trade between the East and the West. Britishers wanted to emulate the exquisite art of India," said Dr Debnath.

"The art of dyeing or reproducing colour by extraction from natural resources was a skill practised both in India and Egypt from ancient times. The skill could have originated in either country, as each possessed the raw materials for producing a great variety of colour from plants and flowers," said Kasturi Gupta Menon.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/