Tied to threads

The art of dyeing

It is the beauty of Indian textiles that first drew the attention of Europeans, the history books tell us. Primary among these was 'chintz', a hand dyed/printed cotton fabric made in the 17th and 18th centuries; today's kalamkari is a watered-down version of chintz. It was a mainstay of India's trade with Europe, so popular that mill-owners, fearing the loss of business, got their governments to ban it. Sadly, deprived of European patronage, the art of chintz-making more or less died out in India.

Centuries later, Renuka Reddy is trying to re-create the art in her Bangalore studio, following directions recorded by two 18th century French travellers. The results, adaptations of pieces you can see at the V&A and museums in the West, are on view at an ongoing exhibition, The Art of Hand Painted Chintz, at Delhi's Gallery Art Motif.

And what an exacting, elaborate process it is! Chintz, traditionally, was resist-dyed with mordants (a chemical that binds the dye to the cloth) — that is, the pattern is marked out and then dipped in dye, so that only those bits take colour. It takes several rounds of dyeing (she uses madder, a natural red dye) to get the range of reds, rusts, maroons and browns that Reddy achieves. In between each round, the cloth is soaked in sheep dung solution and bleached in sunlight. It's a long drawn process, and can take upto six months to complete for larger pieces.

Reddy has spent six years experimenting, but says she still has a long way to go. For instance, she paints in the blue in her designs now, but historically, blue was dip-dyed after the entire cloth was covered with wax. "Amazingly, the cloth did not crack. That's my next main experiment," she says.

— Gargi Gupta; gargi.gupta@dnaindia.net

Rafoo: An invisible art

Sometimes, knowing the context helps to appreciate a work of art. So it is with the works of Priya Ravish Mehra. Not that the works don't immediately captivate you with the evocative, tactile quality of what looks like rough hand-made paper, but is actually the pressed, dried pulp of cotton, Daphne and Ramie (plants used to make cloth) shot through with all kinds of things — twigs, leaves, bark, thread and fabric fragments. But knowing how these works have arisen from Mehra's long association with the Rafoogars of Najibabad makes you see them in a different light.

Priya Ravish Mehra and her rafoo curations

Few of us realise, when we give a torn jeans for 'rafoo', just how much of art and skill there is in what they do. Or history — for a majority of rafoogars come from a small town called Najibabad, 200km from Delhi, and trace their origins to Bukhara from whence they came along with Najibuddaulah, Najibabad's founder sometime in the 18th century. Or that the best part of their earnings comes not from the Rs 10-20 you pay them to repair your jeans, but in buying antique, tattered Kashmiri jamawar shawls, repairing and re-constructing them and reselling.

Mehra, a textile researcher, has been working with the Rafoogars for nearly two decades now. She's documented their craft, presented papers on it at international seminars, taking them along with her when she could — all of which has served to instil in the Rafoogars an appreciation of what they do as 'art', to make felt their "presence in absence", the name of her show. Rafoogari has helped Mehra, a cancer survivor, no less, giving her a metaphor for "to invoke the sudden... rupture in our daily experience" and a "symbolic affirmation of the place, significance and act of existential 'repair' in the corroded fabric of my life. It is as much aesthetic vision as it is life lesson.

— Gargi Gupta; gargi.gupta@dnaindia.net

Weaving on wood

Design, for Rooshad Shroff, is all about "creating an environment as well as an experience". "These are the design aspects that people come more into contact with, experience more and be more aware of," says Shroff.
To this end, the 35-year-old Mumbai-based architect plunges into the unknown, performs experiments and pushes ideas. The conceptual rigour has influenced Shroff's output, which straddles the realms of architecture, furniture and product design, graphic and even package design. Among his notable creations has been a line of furniture that assimilates threads into the woodwork or as he describes it "a combination of material exploration and a conceptual idea". "What if I made a sofa with the upholstery woven within the structure? It's an architectural notion of not having a separate structure and separate skin," says Shroff.

Architect Rooshad Shroff weaves embroidery into wood for furniture pieces

A prime example is the wooden tiled wall embroidered on both sides at Mumbai's Christian Louboutin store. In the furniture line, the zardosi embroidery — with cotton or metallic threads in French knots or cross stitch patterns — forms a canvas on screens, the seat of chairs, benches and tabletops. "It's all about precision. And if you want to change the canvas, you simply have to cut up the threads and start over."

Shroff's textile explorations started when he was studying architecture at Cornell, where participating in the Cornell Design League, he created an acrylic corset and at another time, a dress fashioned out of a three-dimensional rubber fabric. For his master's thesis, he examined if synthetic fabrics could be stretched by the application of heat to be used as building material. His more recent work involving textiles — evolved after six months of experimentation — is a line of lights for the luxury home textile brand Atmosphere. "It's a series of resin tube-lights. The different kinds of fabrics allow for a different kind and hue of light to pass through the tubes," says Shroff. "What I like about these collaborations is that they allow you to go a little bit out of your comfort zone."

— Marisha Karwa; marisha.karwa@dnaindia.net