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Article

Bandhana  

Gordon Campbell

Hindi term for ‘tie and dye’, a mode of dyeing in which knots are tied in the fabric to prevent knotted parts from absorbing the dye. The term was imported into Europe (with the spelling bandana or bandanna) to denote a richly coloured silk handkerchief, with spots left white or yellow by the process described above; the term is now applied to cotton handkerchiefs and headscarves....

Article

Batik  

Susi Dunsmore

Resist-dyeing technique. Patterns are created on cloth (usually undyed cotton or silk) by painting, printing, or stenciling designs in wax, rice, or cassava paste, mud, or some other dye-resistant substance on to those areas intended to retain their original color after dyeing. Further patterns and colors can be introduced by altering or adding to the resist areas before redyeing. Finally, the resist media are removed by rubbing or washing. Delicate lines within the patterns, where the resist substance has cracked and allowed the dye to seep in, are characteristic of the technique. (See also Textile, §III, 1(ii)(b)).

The term batik is thought to derive from the Malay tik, to drip or drop, but exactly where and when the technique was first practiced is uncertain; it seems likely that the principle was discovered independently in several different areas. The earliest known batiks (London, V&A, nos. 1552–1899 and 1103–1900; Basle, Mus. Vlkerknd.), dated to the ...

Article

Calico  

Gordon Campbell

In early use, a generic name for cotton cloth from India, which was imported from Calicut (now Kozhikode), on the Malabar Coast of Kerala. The term subsequently came to denote similar European cloths. In late 19th-century England it was applied to any white unprinted cotton cloth, though in the USA and Scotland such cloths were called ‘cotton’. In modern American English it now denotes a coarse printed cotton cloth....

Article

Dhurrie  

Gordon Campbell

Article

Heeramaneck, Nasli M.  

Milo Cleveland Beach

(b Bombay, 1902; d New York, 1971).

American dealer of Indian birth. Following the decline of the family textile business, his father, Munchersa Heeramaneck, became an antiquities dealer and shrewdly developed a speciality in Chinese ceramics. As a youth, Nasli was assigned to the New Delhi office, but in 1922 he was sent to Paris to study and open a branch. He soon moved to New York, which became the final location for Heeramaneck Galleries. In 1939 Heeramaneck married Alice Arvine, an American portrait painter from New Haven, and she became an active partner in the business. They were responsible for the acquisition of many great works of Indian, Tibetan and Nepali sculpture, Mughal and Rajput painting, Ancient Near Eastern and Islamic art, and Central Asian (including nomadic) art by major American museums. They also formed a comprehensive private collection of South Asian art, including superlative paintings and sculptures from the Himalayan regions, and a smaller collection of ancient Near Eastern and Islamic art, both purchased by the ...

Article

Indian subcontinent: Carpets  

Sheila S. Blair, Jonathan M. Bloom, and Steven Cohen

Woollen knotted-pile carpets have probably been manufactured in India for at least two millennia, but they have never been the subcontinent’s predominant floor covering. Traditionally, the majority of the population has relied more on cotton floorspreads, cotton and woollen flatweaves, thick cushions, grass mats and even felts.

See also Indian Subcontinent [India and South Asia before 1947]

The earliest written records of carpets in north India are contained in Buddhist texts such as the Pali Bramajāl sutta (probably compiled c. 3rd–5th century ad). Such texts mention curious carpet types such as uddalomī (Pali: ‘rugs with “fur” on both sides’), ekantalomī (‘rugs with “fur” on one side’) and kuttakaṃ (‘rugs large enough for 16 dancers’) as well as namatakaṃ (‘felt rugs’). The Ārtha śāstra, a Sanskrit text on statecraft perhaps written in the 3rd century bc, though it existed in oral form much earlier, and the preserved version is apparently of a later date, mentions ...

Article

Indian subcontinent: Textiles and dress  

Ṛta Kapur Chishti, Rosemary Crill, Margaret Hall, Kalyan Krishna, and D. A. Swallow

From the late 17th century to the early 19th India was the textile workshop of the world. Today, although mill production and shifting economic trade patterns have limited the role of the subcontinent’s hand-produced textiles, this highly skilled, immensely rich and varied industry survives and remains a part of the area’s living culture. Though the emphasis in the following sections is on the period before 1947, the present tense is often used to reflect the continuity of the traditions. (For textiles in the post-independence period see India, Republic of, §VII; Pakistan, Islamic Republic of, §V; and Bangladesh, People’s Republic of, §5.)

See also Indian Subcontinent [India and South Asia before 1947]

Clothing, like food, is of immense social importance, being one of the main means by which social differentiation is demonstrated publicly in this highly stratified society. As has been true for over three millennia, gifts of cloth are still essential to the performance of life-cycle rites, to the worship of the gods and as payment in kind to specialist service castes. The pre-eminence of the indigenous industry has depended on a number of key factors. First, raw materials are readily available. Cotton, the most important, is widely grown. Wool, flax and silk (both indigenous wild silks and the cultivated silk introduced from China in the early Christian era) are all available. Second, important technical skills, particularly the knowledge of cotton-dyeing and a wide range of decorative techniques, developed early in the region. Third, besides widespread cotton production for local consumption, specialist caste and guild organizations produced luxury and export textiles using well-established regional and inter-regional trading systems....

Article

Kincob  

Gordon Campbell

Article

Mukherjee, Mrinalini  

Partha Mitter

(b Bombay, Dec 11, 1949; d New Delhi, Feb 2, 2015).

Indian sculptor and fibre artist. The only daughter of painters Leela and Benode Behari Mukherjee, Mrinalini began her training in mural painting with K. G. Subramanyan at the M. S. University in Baroda, Gujarat, in 1971. The same year she also started to experiment with hemp, which she found more congenial to her interest in material and in creating solid, monumental forms. The unusual power of her sculptures lies in her setting up a dialectical or even paradoxical relationship between the media and the subject-matter, altering the conventional meanings and usages of sculpture and throwing into question the essential nature of a substance. For instance, she has woven monumental sculptures with soft vegetable fibres instead of casting or carving them. Her glazed ceramics give the impression of bronze pieces, while her bronze representations of decaying vegetation evoke qualities and textures not generally associated with such hard substances. In 1971 she began using hemp dyed with deep saturated colours, which she stretched and knotted into ropes, using them to knit and weave her figures. Although not an avowed feminist, her ‘homespun gods’ do convey a feminist message. The softness and plasticity of hemp, more suitable for a woman’s spinning wheel than the ‘manly’ medium of sculpture, belies the power evoked by the mysterious, brooding, over life-size totemic deities, sexually charged ...

Article

Palampore  

Gordon Campbell

Article

Shawl  

Pamela Clabburn

Garment, originally of Indian origin, consisting of a square or oblong piece of fabric worn loosely over the head or shoulders. As articles of fashionable dress, shawls were not known in Europe until the last quarter of the 18th century. They had, however, been worn since the late 16th century in India, especially in Kashmir and other parts of the north, by both men and women, thrown over the head with one end over the shoulder. Indian shawls are finely and intricately woven, using a technique similar to that used in Europe for tapestries (see Textile §II 1.). The designs are in rich, strong but never harsh colours, and the grounds in off-white or in many subtle shades, especially deep yellow and nutmeg brown. Their main beauty, however, is the fine, soft wool from which they were woven. At its best (and most expensive) the wool came from the underbelly of the mountain goat, which grazed high up in the Himalayas. The higher the grazing, the finer the wool produced. The next best came from the flocks of goats herded by nomadic tribes....