Artist Interview with Renuka Reddy
It was a book that got me started wanting to work with chintz. I just happened to collect a book on chintz, and I was so inspired with how the pictures looked that I wanted to make those textiles, but I did not know anything else about it.
And I went in search of a traditional craftsman who could make those textiles like the ones I saw in the book, but I could not find anyone with the skillset and the knowledge.
And I realized when I started studying the textiles a little bit more, and how they were made, that they were so incredibly complex, the techniques that have evolved over thousands of years, I was actually more intrigued with the process.
I worked for many years in the craft sector in India, and then switched to the automotive sector in the U.S., which was primarily working with technical textiles. I realized that chintz was a perfect medium for me to combine the technical knowledge and my experience with craft, because chintz is not just a craft, it’s a very highly technical craft.
I actually didn’t have a full piece for many years. My first five, six years was just small swatches and just experimenting all the time. It was just plain research, and studying journals and literature, and just literally experimenting on the dye table. So my mother thought I was completely mental for many, many years. It’s only now she’s beginning to understand why I do what I do.
To me, it just captures all of my senses when I look at chintz, at least aesthetically, but when you understand what it’s gone through, 300 washings to get to where it is. I think … that’s just amazing to me.
Artist Interview with Ajit Kumar Das
I was born in the state of Tripura in India.
I didn’t get a lot of education there, but I made it through high school.
From early childhood, I was drawn to painting and drawing.
When I was growing up, my family had a washing business.
My father used natural ingredients for cleaning…processes like boiling and bleaching.
From food, you can get a lot of colors, like black plum.
From plum, you could extract the juice and make a drawing on paper, for example.
The first [painted cotton] piece that I made, I drew a cow from my imagination.
But the details were in the ornate kalamkari style.
Details like the hooves and horns…if you paint a cow with so much ornamentation, the original form of the cow is completely overshadowed by the details.
So, I painted in less detail, and then I really liked the look of the cow.
The stone paintings take a lot of time to complete.
For some of them, I do the outline with a bamboo pen, and the filling in with a brush.
In some areas, I use a dry brush, and then make tiny, tiny, tiny details.
I am not an artist or painter or dyer…nothing
In my mind, I just like doing the work, and so I do it.
I don’t ever say that I am an artist. I never say I am a painter or a dyer.
With each passing day, I am still dissatisfied with my work and striving to improve.
In the beginning, I used to think that I was a master.
But now I feel that I have a long way to go. I must go deeper—almost back to the beginning.
Artist Interview with Chandrakant Chitara
My name is Chandrakant. My father was Bula Bhai.
When I was little, many foreigners would come to meet my father, and shake his hand.
I felt that I would also like to do something where such people would come to meet me.
So I didn’t go to school, and instead practiced drawing with my father.
In our village, the temples were small. There weren’t any large temples.
So during the Navarati festival, when the Mother Goddess is worshipped, cloth hangings [with her image] are hung behind the temples.
These cloth hangings are called mata ni pachedi.
Our ancestors have been making these for 700 years, since the time of the Mughal dynasty. In the past, the hangings were printed using mud blocks.
I noticed that there weren’t many mata ni pachedi entirely painted by hand. So I thought that if I completely painted a mata ni pachedi with care and skill, I would gain attention and be able to distinguish myself.
When I was 15 or 16 years old, I made my first completely hand-drawn piece. When people saw it, they said it was great and admired the natural dyes.
Some people couldn’t believe that such colors were achieved through natural dyes. But when I showed them my process for making dyes, they understood.
We have received many national awards in our family, but our economic situation hasn’t improved. We do not have basic amenities to do our work, or even enough space to work.
We have no land to dry our cloth. Water is a big problem.
The water flow from the river is not enough. This has created difficulties for the work that we do.
The natural dyeing process has become very difficult.
Chemical pollutants have started coming into the river, and people are throwing garbage into parts of the river.
We now have to walk to distant villages and use their rivers for our work.
Still, our family has been honoring the Mother Goddess and doing this work for generations.
We are now teaching our children the same thing so that they will continue this work.
Artist Interview with Abduljabbar M. Khatri
My name is Abduljabbar.
I belong to a community known as Khatris.
Khatris are dyers and bleachers of fabric.
Our grandfather’s work was ajrakh block printing,
using natural colors and dyeing in Indigo.
Ajrakh is traditionally a fabric printed on both sides.
It is a very time-consuming process.
The work or design is always geometrical.
You won’t find figurative imagery on ajrakh.
Historically, only red and blue colors were used, only red and blue.
First the cloth is printed in red and then it is dyed in indigo.
I was 8 years old when my father taught me printing, that’s when I started.
My father was very insistent to teach me precision in the craft.
So that if a needle was stuck through one point in the design, it would emerge at the exact same point on the reverse side.
In 1996, I went on Hajj and in the mosque I saw Islamic designs, which are all geometrical.
This gave me the idea to make these Islamic geometric designs on cloth.
The future of airakh looks bright to me.
We are fortunate that our children are again taking interest in airakh and also have studied at school.
My son Adam graduated from the National Institute of Fashion Design in 2003.
He retains original ajrakh elements but also takes it in new directions, using both older colors and new ones.
Thanks to my son’s education, come new designs and new methods.
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