Ode to India

Beyond the obvious. Into the overlooked. Treasures from all around the country to be curious about, cherish and champion.

- By VINITA MAKHIJA.

WE'VE GROWN UP learning of the gleam of Kanchipurams from Tamil Nadu, the historical grandeur of Banarasis from Varanasi, the familiar swirls of kantha from West Bengal. But provenance is a curious thing—sometimes linear, sometimes shape-shifting. What belongs where? Who decides?

Dr Ritu Sethi, founder-trustee of the Craft Revival Trust, recalls a footnote that lingers: “In a primary source, I found that [John] Lockwood Kipling (Rudyard Kipling's father) said the finest whitework textiles came from the Madras Presidency. But we don't know what this ‘whitework’ looked like. Could it have been chikankari, most famously from Awadh?”

Like memories, true craft hides in corners till sought out. Sometimes it stays tethered to a place, but more often than not, it travels via the hands that make it. Take, for example, block printing, most revered in Kutch (Gujarat) as ajrakh, but widely practised in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Karnataka and even Machilipatnam, in Andhra Pradesh, where it’s known as kalamkari block printing. Partitions may force people to divide goods and lands, but patronage follows desire, and textiles move where they are tugged at. India is not a single scroll of tradition; it’s a patchwork quilt with infinite seams. And for every celebrated weave, there is a second, third or even fourth textile waiting to be remembered. This is our map of those discoveries. A glossary stitched together with revivalists, risk-takers and quiet believers who've dusted off archives or reimagined threads for today’s wardrobes beyond the most obvious names.

ANDHRA PRADESH