Labour of love: in Srinagar, Habibullah Palgaru, aged 80, delved into his art.
|
Prized
talents
Bashir Ahmad
Jaan toiled two and a half years to produce “Samavar,” an exquisite Pashmina shawl
embroidered with silk thread in 14 different hues. His skill, inherited from his
forefathers, was rewarded with the UNESCO crafts prize this year. He shared the $5,000
first place (for the Asia region) with Kim Taeja of the Republic of Korea, who created
“Gilsando,” a six-panelled folding screen, representing the finest silk-thread court
embroidery.
Established in 1990, the prize encourages craftspeople to merge their technical mastery
of age-old skills with inventive and contemporary designs. Awarded by international
juries during regional crafts fairs around the world, the prizes are given to works
of exceptional artistic quality, which are also deemed marketable.
UNESCO works closely with the International Trade Centre in Geneva to help craftspeople
market their products both locally and internationally. “Though UNESCO’s role ends
when the actual business of marketing begins, the activities of the crafts programme
do not make a separation between marketing and art,” explains Indrasen Vencatachellum,
chief of the crafts and design section. “The basic question for craftspeople is how
to sell their products, because very often, their craft is their only means of subsistence.”
One of UNESCO’s most recent projects (April 2001) is the opening of a crafts showroom
near Luang Prabang in Laos. A renovated building now serves as a centre where crafts
produced in workshops in three nearby villages are marketed directly to customers,
allowing craftspeople to reap higher profits by selling without intermediaries.
|
|
High
quality crafts can’t survive without skillful marketing, argues the author, who has
woven close ties with Indian craftspeople to build up a business. When will aid agencies
follow suit?
As an art historian,
I had long been fascinated by the fragments of medieval hand-painted and block-printed
fabrics excavated in the rubbish heaps of Fostat, old Cairo. These were almost certainly
made in Gujarat in western India, and attest to a flourishing trade with Egypt in
Indian textiles in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Some years ago, I decided to see if I could revive the patterns of these ancient
textiles with techniques still available today.
I met Mohammad Bhai Siddiqui–a famous master block-cutter and printer from Kutch
in Gujarat–and showed him illustrations of some of these fragments, now in museums
in different parts of the world. He was very excited, said he had no blocks like
this, but recognized them as part of his tradition. He promised to see what he could
do.
Mohammad Bhai was as good as his word. From an illustration of a small fragment,
he had worked out the repeat in the design. He had created a superb Fostat tablecloth,
in rich, glowing colours, made from the same natural ingredients that had been used
in the past.
We launched the tablecloths onto the market, certain that buyers would be as excited
as we were. Alas, we were disappointed. Long used to Indian block prints being cheap,
buyers found our tablecloths too expensive. They were unable to appreciate the centuries
of expertise that had gone into recreating them.
Why should craft be cheap? Why should beautiful, hand-made things be expected to
compete with mass production? Why have the crafts of India, once so highly renowned,
become associated with bad quality, running colours, boring designs?
Because the old traditions of patronage have not been replaced by new ones. Because
craftsmen, no longer working for their own communities, have great difficulty in
finding new markets and fall prey to filling orders where only the price counts.
Because the idea of high-quality craft items aimed at discerning markets is not yet
fully understood in this region. Because the importance of aid in helping to improve
quality and identify market outlets has not been addressed by governments and crafts
organizations.
Craft and commerce are inextricably linked. Very early on, an embroiderer in the
first village centre established by my company said to me, “How fortunate that you
are a commercial company, because you have to make money and therefore so will we!”
She then told me about a government agency and an NGO that had set up training programmes
in the village, but as there was no instrument for marketing or selling any of the
products, the projects had collapsed.
This is not a unique story. I hear the same all over India. A friend in Delhi who
tirelessly promotes craft bewails that aid is always available if she wants to build
a shed in a village, buy some looms or dig a well, but not to help in marketing crafts.
Without promotion or marketing, crafts are perceived as charity. People buy them
to “help the poor craftsmen” rather than because they are well-made and a delight
to have.
From
the village up
For
the tradition of hand-made textiles to survive, new patrons have to be found. My
long interest in textiles and in craft convinced me that something could be done
to revive India’s fabled reputation of producing the world’s finest fabrics.
For many years, my interest in the field was academic, but I have always enjoyed
working in the field and learning about the past from the present. When I came to
live in India almost 15 years ago, the two began to merge; I found I wanted to develop
textile crafts myself.
This is why, together with my husband David, we established Shades of India, a company
that makes high quality textiles for the home. We do not believe that craft should
remain static, so we combine the best of traditional techniques with innovative designs,
some ancient, others contemporary. We have established our markets ourselves, presenting
our collections to buyers, instead of them telling us what they want. A buyer from
a famous London shop once told us: “Make me dream!” This is what we attempt to do.
And increasingly, international buyers are coming to us because they recognize that
India is the only place left in the world where such a variety of hand-made textile
techniques can still be found.
It is not an easy road. There is nothing I enjoy more than sitting with a group of
craftspeople and working out ideas for a new collection. We work with craftspeople
all over India, and at the centres we have established not far from Delhi, in villages
where there had been no employment for women before.
Why
should craft be cheap?
Why should beautiful,
hand-made things be expected
to compete with mass production?
The
same philosophy lies behind the Kashmir Loom Company, which I established a couple
of years ago in Srinagar with Kashmiri brothers Asaf and Hamid Ali. Kashmir understands
the spinning and weaving of high quality wools like nowhere else in the world. The
softest of these is Shahtoosh, now banned because the wild Chiru antelope from which
it comes, faces extinction.
Pashmina is also timeless, weightless, and a delight to wear. It comes from the Changra
goat, that thrives in Ladakh and Tibet at altitudes of over 4,000 metres. This must
not be confused with the poor-quality fabric mixed with silk and other fibres, from
Nepal, marketed under the same name.
In spring, nomad herders lovingly comb out the fleece by hand. This is then brought
to Kashmir to be carded and spun by hand and woven on traditional hand-looms. This
gossamer yarn is too delicate to be treated by any machine. No wonder, then, that
it is so expensive. What else could it be, when so much skill and time have gone
into making a shawl?
Team
work
We
work closely with our craftsmen. At first hesitant to experiment, they are now the
creative force behind what we do. They know their craft can survive only by bringing
new vitality into it, that the market is demanding, and that we work together as
a team, respecting each others’ talent and contribution. They make a good living,
and their sons and daughters often follow in their footsteps.
I feel deeply privileged to be a part of their lives, their craft. As an art historian
I was an outsider, an onlooker into the art of their ancestors. Now I am living it
with them.
If large agencies could add carefully thought-out marketing and sales strategy into
their craft development projects, and do on a larger scale what we attempt in our
very small way, what a change this would make. |
