Threads Of Visual Exploration: Textiles And Allied Practices

Week 1:
Visual Exploration and Textiles

The relevance of textiles in studying art history and material culture 

Identification and salient features of different forms of Indian textiles

Visual exploration and art theory 

Week 2:
Woven Textiles and Allied Practices 

Brocade and extra weft weaving forms and their co-relation with architecture and artifacts

Baluchar saris of Bengal, Kanchipuram saris of Tamil Nadu

Figuration and geometric abstraction 

Week 3:
Textiles and Mughal Miniature Paintings 

Mughal brocade, velvet and woven rugs and their relationship with miniature paintings 

Representational space in textiles and miniatures

Interrelations between courtly art and textile practices beyond visual appearance 

Week 4:
Kalamkari and Allied Practices 

Dyed, painted, printed and resist-dyed cottons of the Coromandel

Relationship between kalamkari, architecture and Deccani craft

Kalamkari and trade networks 

Artisanal perspectives into art history 

Week 5:
Embroidered Narratives

Embroidery on textiles as a way of narrating and overwriting stories

Kashmir shawls, rumals of Chamba and kantha quilts of Bengal and their allied practices

Needle of embroidery as a tool for drawing and writing

Workmanship, domesticity and textiles 

Week 6:
Colonial Interventions and Khadi

Textiles into colonial catalogues and exhibitions

Marginalisation of indigenous textiles and the rise of anti-colonial resistance 

The long-lasting impact of Khadi in nation-building and self-sufficiency

Week 7:
Fashion in the Post-independence India 

Indigenous textiles and designers’ interventions

Redefining of traditional meaning and associations of textiles

Visvakarma exhibitions and artisan-designer collaborations 

Sustainability, slow fashion and their social impact

Week 8:
Textiles and Contemporary Art Practice in India 

Textile as a medium of contemporary art, textile in contemporary art

Nilima Sheikh’s textile-like scrolls, Shruti Mahajan’s transference of weaving metaphors into paper

Contemporary dyed textiles of M. Kailasham and Ajit Das 

Textiles as part of performance art

1. Ages of Sarasa. Fukuoka: Fukuoka Art Museum, Kyushu Asahi Broadcasting Co., Ltd., and The Asahi Shimbun, 2014.
2. Aitken, Molly Emma. The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.
3. Barnes, Ruth. Indian block-printed textiles in Egypt: The Newberry collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
4. Steven Cohen, and Rosemary Crill. Trade, Temple, and Court: Indian Textiles from the Tapi Collection. Mumbai: India Book House Pvt. Ltd, 2002.
5. ed. Textiles in Indian Ocean Societies. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005.
6. “Indian Cotton for Cairo: The Royal Ontario Museum’s Gujarati Textiles and the Early Western Indian Ocean Trade.” Textile History 48, no. 1 (2017): 15-30.
7. Bean, Susan S. “Gandhi and Khadi: The fabric of Indian Independence.” In Cloth and Human Experience, edited by Annette B. Weiner and Jane Schneider, 355-76. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
8. Cecil, Bessie. Batik Sutra: Tagore, Travels & Textiles. Kolkata: Sutra, 2011.
9. “Chay Red: Forgotten Dye of the Coromandel Coast.” In Marg 65, no. 2 (2013): 68-73.
10. Chattopadhyay, Kamaladevi. Indian Handicrafts. New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1963.
11. Cohen, Steven. “Materials and Making.” In The Fabric of India, edited by Rosemary Crill, 16-77. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2016.
12. Crill, Rosemary, ed. Textiles from India: The Global Trade. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2006.
13. Chintz: Indian Textiles for the West. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2008.
14. ed. The Fabric of India. London: V&A Publishing, 2015.
Edwards, Eiluned. Textiles and Dress of Gujarat. Ahmedabad and London: V&A Publishing in association with Mapin Publishing, 2011.
15. Block Printed Textiles of India: Imprints of Culture. New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2016.
16. “Ajrakh: From Caste Dress to Catwalk.” Textile History 47, no. 2 (2016): 146-70.
17. Fee, Sarah., ed. Cloth That Changed the World: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020.
18. Houghteling, Sylvia. The Art of Cloth in Mughal India. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2022.
19. “Kalamkari: The Richness of its Traditions.” Art Varta (2016): 130-7.
20. “Sentiment in Silks: Safavid Figural Textiles in Mughal Courtly Culture.” In Affect, Emotion, Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires: New Studies in Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Art and Culture, edited by Kishwar Rizvi, 124-47. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018.
21. Mamidipudi, Annapurna, and Wiebe E. Bijker. “Innovation in Indian Handloom Weaving.” Technology and Culture 59, no. 3 (2018): 505-45.
22. Peck, Amelia, ed. Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013.
23. Shah, Archana. Crafting a Future: Stories of Indian Textiles and Sustainable Practices. New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2021.
24. Sengupta, Rajarshi. “From Reference to Knowledge Repositories: On Mimetic Aspects of Kalamkari Making,” South Asian Studies 37, no.1 (2021): 51-71.
25. “Performing Histories: Enduring Dyes and Waterways in Artisanal Lives.” Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice (2019), DOI:10.1080/20511787.2019.1648992.
26. “An Artisanal History of Kalam?” Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice 7, no. 1 (2019): 25-37.
27. Sethi, Ritu. “Shaping Textile Futures: Those Who Led the Way,” Marg 67, no. 4 (2016): 22-31.
28. Venkatesan, Soumhya. “Learning to Weave; Weaving to Learn … What?.” In Making Knowledge: Explorations of the Indissoluble Relation Between Mind, Body and Environment, edited by H.J. Marchand, 150-66. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres.