Reinterpreting the Tree of Life

With the help of master artisans, two women are reviving palampores through embroidery in an effort to portray it not as ornamentation, but art

- By SAMIYA CHOPRA

Scrolls of embroidered textiles sway in the air. As they catch the light, their threads glimmer, revealing an array of images: branches of trees unfurled, peonies blooming in quiet symmetry, deer frozen mid-step beneath a canopy of palm and peepal. At the heart of this visual language lies a centuries-old motif, called the Tree of Life, a symbol that has travelled across cultures.

In The Art of Embroidery by Atelier Nandini Sawhny and Aisha Jameel, the motif returns through a contemporary lens, reimagining the lost elegance of 18th-century palampores. Once hand-painted along the Coromandel Coast and exported by East India companies to adorn European homes, these cotton textiles are now revived through embroidery.

Created now in collaboration with master kaarigars, the palampores here feature intricate aari work from Kutch, Gujarat. The two artists behind the work bring together decades of expertise and sensibility. With them, a second generation of embroiderers from West Bengal carries forward their legacy. "Aisha's father has been into embroidery, and I have worked with him, and that led to the two of us collaborating," says Nandini.