Bengal’s textile history enters the gallery space
An exhibition in Kolkata showcases historic textiles of undivided Bengal, from jamdani and brocades to lesserknown cotton weaves
It may have been light as air but in its heyday, the Bengal Muslin was a heavyweight whose popularity extended to Europe. Two garments from the Weavers Studio Resource Centre (WSRC) in Kolkata narrate this story. One is a jamdani angrakha woven with the royal coat of arms of Wajid Ali Shah, the last king of Awadh who was exiled to Kolkata in 1856. Likely to have been made in Tanda (near Faizabad, in modern-day Uttar Pradesh) or Dhaka (Bengal) in 1848, the gossamer weave softens the hard contours of the royal insignia.
The other is a muslin gown made in Dhaka in the 1830s and traded to Scotland. Its elaborately embroidered hem, ruched bodice and neckline and gently billowing sleeves may have been au courant then, but it would as easily find many takers among today’s vintage fashion connoisseurs. These two garments are among the exhibits at Textiles of Bengal: A Shared Legacy, an exhibition that opened in Kolkata on 30 January and will run till 31 March. Presented by WSRC in association with Kolkata Centre for Creativity and JSW Foundation, the exhibition will showcase the legacy of Bengal textiles across West Bengal and Bangladesh through four centuries.
Conservation efforts are led by Anupam Sah, while Mayank Mansingh Kaul serves as curator and Reha Sodhi helms the exhibition design. For Darshan Shah, founder of WSRC, a textile archive and documentation centre associated with the textiles label Weavers Studio, the exhibition is rooted in years of work across crafts clusters in Bengal and a decade-long effort to bring the stories of the region’s textiles into museums, research and documentation.
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In 2019, WSRC collaborated with National Museum, New Delhi, to host an exhibition on the Baluchar textiles of Bengal, known for their pictorial weaves that depicted mythological stories and scenes from daily life. The new exhibition marks the next step, narrating a bigger story of textiles from the region and showcasing lesser-known aspects of its handloom traditions. “Despite the fact that the region once clothed the world, there is comparatively little representation of Bengal at exhibitions and in museums," says Shah, who has engaged with artisans across crafts clusters in the state as well as in Bangladesh.
While Bengal remains home to weaving clusters, many handloom varieties and motifs are no longer in production. “We don’t see many of the designs that were historically done in Shantipur, and there is only one unit making silk balaposh (quilts and shawls) anymore," she observes. “Weaves such as the garad saree or farashdanga dhoti are still being made, but those are very different from the original designs."
One of the main purposes of the exhibition is to shine a spotlight on such fabrics. Apart from the collections of WSRC, the exhibition includes textiles and objects loaned from the Botanical Survey of India, Devi Art Foundation in New Delhi, TAPI in Surat and Mumbai, and Museum of Art & Photography in Bengaluru. A selection of garments and textiles will also come from personal collections: Ruby Palchoudhuri and Jharna Bose in Kolkata, Umang Hutheesing in Ahmedabad, and Peter Lee in Singapore.
An awards ceremony for crafts practitioners and artisans, a two-day symposium, and a tome of scholarly essays documenting the textile traditions covered in the exhibition accompanied its inauguration. The exhibits encompass muslin and jamdani, kantha and chikankari, Baluchar and namavali, Murshidabad silks and brocades woven across Bengal. A section on materials and processes includes colonial-period documents, dye samples and fabric swatches, while a series of “patron textiles" showcases designs commissioned for the Bengal market from Kashmir and Varanasi.
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The embroidered exhibits feature colchas (quilts and coverlets) crafted for Portugal and haji rumals that made their way to Indonesia and Arab countries. The silks and zari crafts of Murshidabad include a 19th century man’s velvet topi embroidered with Basra pearls from the collection of Shashikant Nowlakha and a silk and velvet masnad (seat) cover with zari layered on yarn loaned by Sangeeta and Siddharth Dudhoria. Familiar textiles with distinctive designs are also on display, such as a jamdani with motifs derived from earrings, neelambaris (indigo-hued sarees) with colourful and metallic motifs that were worn on the night of Diwali, and colourful cotton kanthas including one embroidered with playwright Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s portraits.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is also its most understated gallery, showcasing cotton sarees and dhotis which rarely find representation in such spaces. Some of these include the begum bahar, sheer cotton drapes that women wore to soirees, or reversible sarees from Shantipur bearing two colourways on each side of the garment. Vintage saree borders bear varied motifs—from the royal emblem of the British empire and family inscriptions to angur lata (grape vines) and padma prajapati (lotus and butterflies). Many of these designs remain only in private collections and memories, such as that of actor and filmmaker Aparna Sen who spoke during the symposium, recalling her begumbahar sarees with wide borders. In spotlighting such stories, the exhibition hopes to do more than celebrate the past—the vision is to bring them back in style and enable policy changes for revival projects. “The curiosity for our project and its outcome will hopefully encourage many to share their heritage textiles and give us an opportunity to photograph and document these textiles," adds Shah, who is already working to recreate some of the textiles at Weavers Studio.
Sohini Dey is a Delhi-based writer and editor.
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