the Blackthorn Orphans
  • B L O G
  • The Blackthorn Orphans: read it onsite
  • The Blackthorn Orphans TRANSLATIONS PAGE
  • Lovely R BLOG
  • PHOTOESSAYS
  • SELECTED RAVINGS: essays & opinion
  • RUBYHUE Lipstick Review
  • blackthorn ROSE REVIEW
  • KITCHEN BITCH: Recipes etc.
  • verse
  • Hostile Witness FILM REVIEW
  • ALOES & SUCCULENTS
  • Blackthorn Perfume Review
  • B I O
  • C O N T A C T

Our Textiles: Two vintage Indian Banjara Gala embroideries with shisha and cowries.

2/9/2014

 
Picture
Disclaimer- I have a pretty superficial knowledge of Indian textiles and this series won't be any scholarly dissertation.  But we do collect an eclectic range of Islamic and Asian material and have a very broad sort of meta-familiarity on our side, so hopefully our observations will be of some use.  We both love this field and it has never been easier for the dufus or layperson to appreciate and acquire items from its immense artistic legacy.   

The Banjara (or Lambadi/Lamani) people are a formerly nomadic tribe, largely (sometimes nominally) Hindu, distributed across India and are one of the putative ancestors of the Roma populations scattered throughout Europe.  They've suffered their share of the socioeconomic disadvantages incurred by virtually all traditionally mobile groups compelled by policy and circumstance to take up subsistence agriculture, but seem to have retained a distinct identity.   

It's safe to say they enjoy ornamentation.  To my dilettante eye, their aesthetic has a lot in common with that of other designated 'tinker/gypsy' (I find these terms borderline derogatory but they have wide historical currency) and dissenter groups across India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and into Central Asia such as the Kutchi, Kalashi and Baluch.  It rejoices in the vivid hues and massed amulet devices of fortune and protection and declarations of portable wealth.  

Settlement seems to instigate a pattern of divestment familiar to any collector of ethnographic textiles.  The stuff that Nana wore loses its relevance as the cultural context is lost; these pieces are sold to traders who then move them on to tourists and western collectors.  While this may seem a melancholy reality, in practise it has resulted in the preservation of a lot of wonderful material.  I bought a collection of really nice vintage textiles from a lady who'd spent time in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, getting to know the locals and being gifted old family items as tokens of appreciation for the work she was doing.  These two pieces are the first from that group that I've posted so far.

GALA WITH CHAIN-STITCH, LEAD BEADS AND COWRIES, KARANTAKA, EARLY 20TH C
A gala is a rectangle of embroidered cloth, usually homespun cotton in older pieces like this one, worn a little like a hood to protect the nape of a woman's neck while she's carrying pots on her head.  It is secured via the tassels at the top.  Cowrie shells are ancient symbols of the Feminine and divine protection and are used pretty lavishly in Subcontinental textiles.  They also have a more practical attribute in that they weight the piece so that it sits well in situ.  This one measures 35 x 27cm, excluding fringing.
Picture
It retains most of its original ragged tassels (see details below) and even the soft lead beads that decorate them.  From the tufts of white thread in the central band I guess it might have lost a line of cowries there.

The chain stitching is incredibly dense, covering every nanometre of the underlying structure, every cotton thread spun and loomed by hand before being worked to this glorious extent.  A cursory investigation of the interweb leads me to believe this piece is from Karnataka (formerly Mysore), as the style and technique is characteristic of that region.  I'll stick my neck out and say it's from the first third of the 20Cth.  There's not an artificial thread on it, the colours are vegetable-derived and have that almost indefinable patina of both wear and age.  

Dating handspun cotton can be difficult since these materials and techniques were used until very recently throughout Asia; you can encounter pieces separated by a century that are hard for the beginner to differentiate.   But once you've handled a decent number of pieces even the novice can start to get a feel for relative vintages.
In some traditions these older gamuts gave way to brighter 'chemical' dyes as far back as Victorian times, basically as soon as they were synthesised and distributed by western manufacturers.  You'll see these azo and aniline colours, often solid greens, blue-purples and freaky reds, creeping in amongst the softer shades in rugs, clothing, scarves, tent and animal ornamentation from around 1870 onwards.  Other groups held tight to organic dyestuffs until the last few decades and even today some of these mind-bogglingly old techniques are being revived, often through womens' craft collectives.  Below right- rear detail.
We don't view the use of synthetic dyes as an aesthetic catastrophe, but we're a minority among collectors who have historically been obsessed with excluding anything containing them from personal or scholarly appreciation.  Rug snobs are the worst, but hey- we're happy to pick up the awesome pieces they've discounted because of a single colour. 
Picture
In both of these pieces the cotton thread and backing cloth is visibly hand-spun and hand-loomed, full of natural irregularities and possessing a soft, rubbed, weary sort of dryness, factors that reliably denote age in the absence of provenance.  More recent cotton is smoother, waxier in its finish, has a tighter handle and tends to be synthetically coloured (though this is not always so.)  Modern embroideries tend also to be 'neater', more determinedly symmetrical and less idiosyncratic in their design.  The stitching itself is almost always larger, coarser and more cursory looking, particularly in items produced specifically for sale rather than personal or dowery use, though elements of the design might still be perfectly ancient.  The 'arrow' or directional bands to each side of the above piece are a motif used by tribes all the way from Tangiers to the Tonkin Gulf for thousands of years, and are still employed today.
Picture
Organic dyes do tend to fade softly and evenly, (although there are a surprising number of corrosive exceptions that will actually destroy the underlying fibres) and inorganic colours are sometimes jarring and less 'harmonious' to the extrinsic eye, but harmony isn't everything, and these considerations were not uppermost in the minds of the various creators.  As an artist, I find this distinction spurious.  Not to mention sexist, conservative, arbitrary and gobsmackingly arrogant.  The same people who'd praise Picasso or Basquiat for using chrome yellow think they know better than the Banjara lady who likes neon pink.  (Rant over.)
Picture
GALA WITH APPLIQUÉ, SHISHA MIRRORS & COWRIES, MADHYA PRADESH, EARLY 20TH C
This gala is quite possibly older still than the one above.  It's a rather tired old soldier with a few glass losses and no tassels left to speak of, but its enduring beauty and purpose as a protective item could not be more emphatically expressed.

It's from a Banjara family in Madhya Pradesh.  It features various raised embroidery, appliqué and shisha work, the pieces of handblown glass couched around with sturdy chain stitch.  (You can see the reverse directly below)  The dusty saffron palette just breathes age, its colours both rich and subdued in contrast to the remains of the replacement stitching in whacky green that once held the ties in place.  

The shisha glass panels are thick with bubbly irregularities and burnished with a petrol-blue lustre, in contrast to the foil-backed silver mirrors used in contemporary work.  They are murky, jewelled phylactery, staring down misfortune and jealousy.   Below- rear details.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
In the detail below you can make out a number of the techniques employed in this piece.  Visible also in the vacant glass apertures is the old plain-weave cloth that forms the basis of this textile, with the exposed stretches only slightly faded in comparison, a factor which also argues for organic-based dyes and an early date in this instance.

I really enjoy the spiky bands of appliqué and lively floating thread on this gala.  Despite the stiff visual competition that crowds our bedroom, it commands a very special kind of attention, lurking on the black wall like Argos of the hundred eyes and never, ever blinking.
Picture
I'll be continuing this series so if textiles are your thing, keep checking back.

*   More of the strange & the beauteous from our personal collection   *   Photoessays here   *



Comments are closed.

    RSS Feed

    Picture

    Independent Creativity
    Hi-Fi Introversion

    ORIGINAL CONTENT
    HONEST REVIEWS
    VELVETEEN VERBIAGE
    VISUAL LUXURY
    MORBID IDLING
    THE NATURAL WORLD
     
    ​photography  
    film
    flora  fauna  culinary
    ethnography  objet
    ​

    modest living
    ​vintage shit

    A U T H O R
    Picture
    K ✂︎ l l y
    congenital delinquent
    Human Durian
    celebrating
    glorious deviation in the land of
     the long white cloud

    -  New Zealand  -


    - T h e   B o o k -

    Picture
    T H E  
    B L A C K T H O R N
    O R P H A N S


    What is freedom, when it is
    all that remains to you?
    In exile two brothers pursue an anarchist's trajectory,  from an old world into the new, from East to West, subject always to the pleasures & horrors of an enduring flesh, to the ironies of karma & impunity. Love bears thorns, the lost return & the dead are haunted by the living. 
    ​

    E P I C   D A R K   F I C T I O N
    *   R E A D   *
    T H E
    B L A C K T H O R N 
    O R P H A N S
     O N S I T E  

    H e r e



    Picture

    Selected
    ​Ravings

    opinion essays observation private regret public 
    exaltation semicoherent speculation 

    Picture

    Photoessay​

    epic undertakings
    documented

    ​
    Picture

    Hostile Witness FilmReview

    Cruel but fair

    Picture

    RubyHue 
    ​
    Lipstick Review

    Lipstick: love it
    ​

    Picture

    Our Photography​

    we've seen worse
    ​

    Picture

    Port Chalmers​

    Dunedin, New Zealand
    ​

    Picture

    Blackthorn ​
    ​Rose Review

    Garden Hoe Wisdom
    Picture

    Verse​

    Loss, love, truth, beauty everything, everything
    ​
    Picture

    The  Lovely R's Blog​

    Likes photography  Knows a bit about it

    Picture

    We Liked This​

    Amazing things from other people
    ​

    Picture

    Cacti, Aloes
    ​&
     
    Flora​

    Our garden & general vegetal splendours
    ​

    Picture

    KitchenBitch

    Home cooking
    & raw ingredients
    ​
    Picture

    Ethnographic​

    Strange wonderful things from elsewhere
    ​

    Picture

    Jewellery
    ​

    Picture

    Tiny Little 
    Dinosaurs
    - a book for children -


    All images & text property of the authors 
    ​
    unless stated

    © us
    & original sources
    All Rights Reserved



    Picture

    Privacy Policy
    ​This is a noncommercial site.
    No ads. No shady data jacks. 
    No interest in your bizniz.

    ​We don't personally view, utilise or sell your data, apart from occasionally checking totally anonymous + super basic site view stats. We don't even know how to monetise that stuff, so don't worry.  Everyone's privacy is important to us.

    Our platform is probably harvesting your data, though, via their cookies. Look at their privacy page so you can see what they're up to.

    Please use Adblock or something similar.
    ​
    Google et al superimpose ads that we never see a penny from so fuck them.

    Picture

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013


    Picture

    Categories

    All
    A Thing Of Beauty
    Blackthorn Orphans
    Blackthorn Rose Review
    Cacti & Aloes
    Ethnographica
    Flora
    Hostile Witness Film Reviews
    Jewellery
    Kitchen Bitch
    Make Up Review
    Maximum Respect
    Perfume Reviews
    Photo Du Jour
    Photo Essay
    Places & Things: A Blackthorn Review
    Port Chalmers
    Remembering Dreams
    Roses
    Selected Ravings
    Softcore Rendition
    Sweetmeat
    Textiles
    The Lovely R
    Verse
    We Liked This

    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.