The stamp of the cotton trade

An exhibition of 19th century textile labels, 'Ticket Tika Chaap', provides a glimpse of global business history

- Shalini Umachandran

There's an uncanny resemblance between a work of art shown at Bengaluru's Museum of Art & Photography last year and one at its current Ticket Tika Chaap: The Art of the Trademark in Indo-British Textile Trade. In the folio (part of last year's Book of Gold show) from the luminous 17th century Kanchana Ramayana, fine miniatures with gold leaf, Garuda listens to Kaka Bhushundi. In the current show, the same scene with all details of trees and birds is replicated but in a bright, printed chromolithograph at about a quarter of the size. While the one-of-its-kind folio was commissioned by the Benaras royal family, the copied, mass-produced version served as a textile trademark label for a British mill, slapped onto a bale of cloth exported to India.