http://www.india-seminar.com/2005/553/553%20robert%20h.%20mcnulty.htm

excerpts

SUCCESSFUL community development begins with the premise that the more people affected by development have a stake in its formulation and implementation, the greater is the likelihood that when the funding stops and the experts leave, what remains is a sustainable future for all community members. If development means giving people a maximum number of options and ensuring that a host of basic human rights are met, strategies to achieve it must combine adherence to universal principles of transparency, accountability, pluralism, justice and participation, while tailoring development projects to the specific realities of each community’s unique identity and condition. The challenge of sustainable community development is balancing the general with the concrete, marshalling a growing body of economic knowledge with the often complex dynamics facing project designers.

Any global agenda for community development that hopes to make positive contributions must be shaped within the context of four major trends or forces: globalization, urbanization, the spread of democracy, and an information technology revolution that promises to increase exponentially people’s access to information. In addition, the world has witnessed during the last decade a dramatic trend toward devolution, with traditionally strong central governments ceding to local governments both the functions and resources to deliver services in an efficient and effective manner. Especially in Africa and Latin America, a new generation of mayors has demonstrated the wisdom of local control over community affairs, in which city hall or the state capital functions as a mediator between the concerns of individuals, families, and neighbourhoods and national policy-makers in the country’s capital.

Increasingly, development strategies bring together players from within and outside the community and from various sectors – government, business and civil society. This means people are forced to work together in ways that may seem to them alien and threatening. But an accepted truism of the professional development community is that no one sector can do it alone – not government, not business, not civil society. A primary ingredient of this new mix of talents and voices is trust, without which partnerships flounder and dissolve into cynicism and bitterness. Each participant, and, above all, the members of the community being sustainably developed must feel that the other partners are playing according to accepted rules and saying what they mean. In other words, motives, operations and processes must be transparent, which in part depends on effective public disclosures of information. To ensure that participants understand each other’s values and methodologies, media presentations and use of the internet can prepare the ground for fruitful development work.

Successful projects recast the community from being the object of development – acted upon by international lending agencies and experts – to being an active subject in the process leading to the goal of a sustainable future. However, community participation requires a preceding phase of community consultation in which members can become involved in and share control of the development process itself. The community’s values and traditions should help shape the project, not only for reasons of upholding democratic principles, but because citizens possess knowledge that can dramatically affect the development process. Consultation leading to participation can unlock a storehouse of human, social and cultural capital, the exercise of which on their own behalf can solidify commitment and provide vital lessons in self-determination, empowerment, and producing the cultural self-confidence needed to ensure that development projects are sustainable.

When communities cease being recipients of aid and instead become partners for change, they assume ownership over the development process. Empowerment of this sort is infectious: it easily transfers to other aspects of community life beyond the scope of the development project. For these reasons, lending agencies and development organizations recognize that participation must be nurtured despite the frequent difficulty of arriving at consensus. Indeed, a 1994 World Bank study on participation concluded that ‘although lasting benefits from participation take longer to emerge, and are more difficult to quantify, over time they can be expected to offset incremental costs.’ Positive externalities include: fostering training in democratic decision-making; allowing community participants to supply ‘sweat equity’ to the project, hence stretching development dollars; and facilitating an evaluation process in which community members willingly help generate and assess data measuring the project’s success.

- MAMTA MANTRI

mamta@archedu.org

http://www.india-seminar.com/2005/553/553%20john%20howkins.htm

Trade is an another important issue. According to the WTO, intellectual property, and issues like access to knowledge, are primarily matters of trade. The US and some other countries say ideas can be traded like anything else. They say all countries from the richest to the poorest must accept western rules for privatising knowledge, covering everything from indigenous plants to folklore and films.

To my mind, all countries should be able to choose and maintain their own policies on culture and the creative economy. Mahatma Gandhi said: ‘I do not want my house to be walled in or my windows blocked. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about the house as freely as possible. But also I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.’

The West works through the global WTO and bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), mostly between the US and EU and developing countries. It’s worth noting, the World Bank has recently calculated that the 109 FTAs now in existence will increase world income by $112 trillion over 15 years but will cause a loss of $21 trillion for developing countries. Those are astonishing figures. I wonder why so many developing countries are so keen to sign FTAs with the USA.

I would like to ask: Did India’s parliamentary parties know these figures? Did the government know them? Did they calculate the costs and benefits of WTO membership and TRIPs obligations on India’s knowledge base? Did they carry out a comparative analysis of the effects on ‘access to knowledge’ in India and its overseas competitors in Asia? Did they do any research? Is the new law based on any evidence?

Few governments have good data on the creative economy. Too many governments apply old-style thinking, using such concepts as full-time employment, ‘value added’, productivity and interest rates. Frankly, any government that uses these outdated concepts will not succeed in the creative economy.

It is the same with companies. Although IP can be hugely important to a business, few companies are expert in IP law and licensing. Virtually every large company depends substantially upon IP, yet few have an IP expert on the board. Even fewer have a board member who is aware of recent thinking on creativity.

I come back to the point I made at the beginning. Recognise all kinds of creativity, not only the arts, as major cultural and economic processes. Success in the creative economy will come to the organisations that recognise and reconcile the personal, the spiritual and the economic. India can rightfully boast of its entrepreneurial skills, its software skills and its unique religious, spiritual and artistic strengths. Can it combine them? The nomads that make up the creative economy are waiting.

- MAMTA MANTRI

mamta@archedu.org

http://www.india-seminar.com/2005/553/553%20john%20howkins.htm

What does it mean to say that all people can be creative? First, all creativity, whether in the arts or sciences, develops through the same physiological processes. The brain’s synapses fizz and splutter and make connections – or not – in the same way. Modern electronic scanning techniques show that the brain forms a new concept in the same way regardless of whether we, or observers, categorise them as art or science or business innovation. We need to integrate our ideas about creativity with recent discoveries of modern neuroscience.

All creativity also depends on the individual’s capacity to dream, wander, think, challenge, disagree and invent. Creativity expresses diversity, which is the source of culture. Without diversity, there is no culture. All kinds of creativity generate the same buzz of excitement, whether by artist, scientist or business executive. It’s fun. It’s seductive, entertaining, intriguing. This is something that many people, including many government officials, find hard to understand.

Another common factor linking all kinds of creativity is that all thinking is free and therefore creativity is open to all. Of course, in totalitarian, bureaucratic, or hierarchical societies, people are not free and creativity is crushed or shackled. But, because creativity requires so few external resources, it is open to everyone. In an open, classless society, it is meritocratic. Not everyone can be a farmer (you need land), or a manufacturer (you need money and factories) or a government official (you need to pass exams). But everyone can be creative. Of course, the quality will vary but the ambition, the ways of working, the inputs and outputs, are available to all.

This kind of creative thinking is now prevalent in a dozen cities round the world, such as Los Angeles, London, Milan, Tokyo and Paris. Even Shanghai, which is tightly controlled politically, exhibits great freedom in creative, intellectual and economic affairs. The great economist Joseph Schumpeter, who defined our modern ideas about the entrepreneurial function, said in the 1940s that ‘Entrepreneurship in America is now routinized.’ It is the same with creativity. Creativity in these places is now routine.

- MAMTA MANTRI

mamta@archedu.org

http://www.india-seminar.com/2005/553/553%20john%20howkins.htm

CREATIVE imagination is humanity’s greatest resource, the foundation of all art, science and knowledge. It is the means by which we learn about ourselves and about others. Without it we cannot imagine our full potential, let alone achieve it. All this is well-known. At this level, creativity is a private and personal activity. But it is increasingly becoming our favoured route to economic status.

A significant number of people increasingly spend their time on, and earn income from their creative imagination. For them, creativity is not only a spiritual matter but something explicit and public. It is not only a matter of personal expression but a lever of social and business success.

In order to understand this we have to know what creativity is and how it differs from art, discovery, invention and innovation. I define creativity simply as ‘having a new idea’ and the ‘creative economy’ as an economy where ideas, not land or capital, are the most important input and output.

My definitions are broader than the normal ones. Creativity is usually more narrowly tied to the arts and culture: to art, architecture, craft, design, fashion, music, performing arts, publishing and so on. It is true these activities are highly creative and very important. Artists create beauty. They play around with beauty. They share beauty. And, in economic terms, in a network economy, they are economically important. By my own reckoning these activities add up to about 4-5% of global GDP.

But to say artists and performers are the only creative people in the world seems to me to be short-sighted and wrong. It ignores other people, in many fields, who also use their creative imagination. It shuts off huge opportunities, both spiritual and economic.

Surely creativity is found in many places in society. Planting, harvesting and reusing seeds; carrying out a scientific investigation; designing a school curriculum – these can be just as creative as painting a picture and designing a bracelet. They all use the creative imagination.

They all certainly count as culture. Culture has always had two meanings; the narrow meaning of culture as art and aesthetic, and the wider meaning of culture as a collection of values and beliefs. Among the most acute analysts of these twin themes were T.S. Eliot, the poet and critic, and Richard Hoggart, the writer and administrator, who differentiated between both, culture as aesthetic and culture as anthropology.

We need to recapture this wider sense. Certainly in the West we have become too focused on the artist as hero, the Romantic genius, the artist as an outsider. We need to accept that this notion is not the norm and is too restrictive.

- MAMTA MANTRI

mamta@archedu.org

reminiscences of the childhood memories

http://indianbydesign.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/design-feature-toys-from-trash/#more-3115

The toys of my childhood were often assembled with things lying around – newspaper for boats, pebbles for pittoo, chalk for hopscotch, walls for four corners, trees to climb, paper for kites, twigs and rubber bands for slingshots. Toys today are store bought, often hi-tech, tagged according to age group and pre-created.

When Rajiv Majumdar shared these videos of Toys made from Trash, it felt like I’d stumbled upon a treasure. They are the collective effort of Dr. Vidula Mhaiskar, Ashok Rupner, Shivaji Mane and Arvind Gupta who want to make science fun for children by designing low-cost teaching aids. The team works in the Children’s Science Centre, incubated by the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune. Their website features 1100 short films in 13 languages, around 3500 books on Education, Science, Environment and Children’s Books, all available to download for free. Here are a few of the films.

- Mamta Mantri

mamta@archedu.org

Pesha is the classical Indian art of needlework as referred by the Vedas. Though a few specimens of Indian embroidery of a date earlier than the Mughal period now survive, mention of it in the Rigveda proves its antiquity. Bronze needles, conceivably used for embroidery, have been found in Mohenjodaro (2500-1500 BC); and among fgurines from this end and other sites of the Harappa culture, there are some depicted with drapery of an apparently embroidered type.

The beauty, range and variety of these handcrafted textiles have played a key role in social relations and commerce over centuries. The same merchants who brought the Islamic faith to India took block-printed cloth, tie and dye, and embroidery back to Egypt, Indonesia, China and Europe.

These were branded as ‘Export Embroideries’ that included court embroideries refecting Persian and Central Asian infuences; temple hangings from Gujarat and Tamil Nadu; and zari embroideries from Delhi and Agra. Owing to its complex and diverse landscape, India is also home to wide range of regional embroidery done by the women from many states, for e.g. Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal and Andhra Pradesh etc.. The
work done here was not meant for commercial purposes, but done more as personal adornment or as gifts to their families and friends. For generations, the skill for this type of work was passed on from mother to daughter. Some of regional embroideries include:

The representative of Undivided Punjab’s embroidery the phulkari (flower-work) and bagh was the embroidery of the women in the countryside. It is said that a woman begins to stitch a new phulkari from the day her daughter is born. In East Punjab and Haryana, phulkari was done on odhnis or shawls for everyday use on coarse handspun khadi cloth, mostly brownish-red, using foss-silk in darning stitch worked from the reverse side of the fabric.

Gujarat has a large repository of embroidery practiced over generations, which difers from community to community, thus creating a number of distinct visual identities unique to each clan. The embroidery made by women from diferent regions in Gujarat includes ari and kachchhi, primarily done by Rabari tribes in Bhuj and Kutch. Appliqué , also known as kanthi and katab is another form of decorative needlework, more pronounced in Saurashtra, in which human- and animal-like motifs are stitched in patterned fabrics on plain grounds.

In Rajasthan, karchobi, is the needle-work done to make pachhipatti, torans, chaklas and several other items of domestic use. These are worked with purple and red foss-silk in elongated darn-stitch with herring-bone stitch. The designs are mainly geometric; the outer borders are sometimes appliquéd and further embellished with mirrors.

The quilted embroidery of Bengal was known as kantha. Made by the country women as big-sized bedspreads, wraps to be worn, cradle-cloths, or as small-sized book or mirror covers,
they are notable for their distinctively folk designs.

Usually a kantha was made for domestic use or as a gift to some near and dear or revered one.

Chikan embroidery or chikankari, using white thread on fine white cotton cloth is done in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Sometimes yellowish muga silk was also used in addition to the white thread. Used as summer-wear, it originated here sometime in the late 18th century during the time of the Nawabs of Oudh.
The Banjara tribe has been an inseparable part of the Telangana region, Andhra Pradesh.

Their needlework has a style of its own that is distinct from the embroidery work of the Banjaras (mirror work) from Gujarat and the Kutch area. This embroidery is noted for its
originality and elegance.

The use of mirrors, vibrant colours, shells and beads create an ensemble that is kaleidoscopic and refects a sense of gay abandon that is so characteristic
of the Banjaras.

Kasuti embroidery is the creative expression of the women of Karnataka, done by counting the threads of the weft and the warp. There is no possibility of tracing or implanting the design
prematurely as outlines.

With considerable dexterity, an ordinary sewing needle is used to create a variety of designs with coloured threads on the cloth. Kasuti is primarily embroidered on saris, and the designs include temples, temple-carts, enclosures for the tulsi plant,elephants, peacocks and parrots.

- Mamta Mantri

mamta@archedu.org

An excerpt from the book “Traditional Indian Textiles” by John Gillow and Nicholas Barnard

There are three main techniques of traditional textile decoration: loom weaving and decorating, resist dyed work, which includes tying and dyeing as well as painting and printing processes; and embroidery. The skill of weaving and decorating cloth on the loom reached its zenith  some 200 years ago in the shawl workshops of the Vale of Kashmir, the backstreets of Varanasi and Ahmedabad- home and workplace to the weavers of lush gold and silver brocades- and within the muslin and jamdaani factories of the Gangetic floodplains. Embroidered and printed trade cloth were the highly prized produce of the painted export calicoes the hallmark of the Coromandel coast. The finest white embroidery and pulled threadwork on white cotton, known as ‘chikan’ was found in Lucknow, Dacca and Calcutta, and delightfully emboridered and decorated quilted covers, ‘kanthas’ were a folk craft of Bengal and Bihar. In the Western Region of the Subcontinent, cotton and silk Yarn and cloth was decorated for both the domestic and South-East Asian markets by imaginative combinations of tying, dyeing and loom weaving.

For the most part, the regional pattern of decorated textile production exists today as much as it was before the Industrial Revolution, despite changes, not always for the better, in the lives and skills of the workers. Certain techniques of textile preparation and decoration are now becoming rarer and less refined; the chikan work of Lucknow and the mashru weaving of central and western India are two such cases. Others- the double ikat dyeing and weaving of Gujarat, for instance- are in the danger of disappearing altogether- a result of the lack of inherited technical skills rather than of any decline in quality. There are some traditional techniques, however, such as the ikat production of Andhra Pradesh, that have been re-invigorated or adopted by other communities to flourish once more.

- Mamta Mantri

mamta@archedu.org

Excellent article on Chikan Embroidery by

http://www.craftandartisans.com/chikan-embroidery-of-lucknow-uttar-pradesh.html

Lucknow, in Uttar Pradesh, was and is the centre of chikan embroidery, renowned for its timeless grace and its gossamer delicacy, a skill more than 200 years old — exploited, commercialis but not dead. In fact, the craft is alive and struggling to regain some of its former beauty and elegance.

Chikan embroidery is done on fine cotton fabric. The garments are first stitched and then embroidered, whereas skirts, saris, and table linen are first embroidered and then finished.

A study of the origin of chikan reveals that this form of embroidery had come to India from Persia with Noor Jehan, the queen of the Mughal Emperor Jehangir. The word chikan is a derivative from the Persian word ‘chikaan’ meaning drapery. Some, however, insist that the craft migrated from Bengal. What we know is that chikankari came to Oudh when Mughal power declined in Bengal and the artisans moved to the Oudh durbars, seeking employment and patronage. The craft flourished under the benign nawabi influence.

The ladies of the harem vied with each other in making white embroidered caps for the nawabs in order to be noticed and favoured. Earlier garments were so fragile that they had to be discarded after a few washes –this explains why early samples of chikan garments are not available. With the British influence, designs became more formal and items other than ethnic apparel began to be created.

This brought a formalisation of designs to a large extent, which resulted in an export market. These items found a place in the prestigious homes in Europe and England, specimens of which are still available. The bel or creeper was the most commonly used design”;” individual motifs or butis of animals and flowers were also made. Fish (mahi) was a very common motif in Lucknow and used widely because it was the emblem of the Court of Oudh.

The design to be embroidered is printed on the fabric with wooden blocks, using fugitive colours, which are commonly made by mixing a glue and indigo with water. For extra fine designs, brass-blocks are sometimes used. In chikan, the needle is held in the right hand while inserting it into the fabric, the left hand supports and controls the thread so that the stitches take the right shape.

In traditional chikan no frames were used (though they are used now)”;” the portion of the cloth to be embroidered is placed over the index finger of the left hand, supported by the rest of the fingers, leaving the thumb free. The needle is pulled away from the embroiderer who starts from the nearest end and finished at the farthest end. There is a discipline and method in the application of the stitches. The darn stitch is worked on rough cotton fabric to fill angular designs and to cover the surface of the fabric, while satin stitching is done exclusively on delicate fabrics like silk, muslin, or linen. In chikan some stitches are worked from the wrong side of the fabric, while others are worked from the right side.

It is however unique in its discipline in as much as stitches designated for a particular purpose are used only for that purpose — they are not replaced by other stiches. For example, the chain stitch (zanjeera) will only be used for the final outline of a leaf, petal, or stem. Different specialists work with different types of stitches. For example, open work or jaali is not done by embroiderers who do the filling work – each worker completes his/her bit and the fabric is then sent to the next embroiderer. The wages for each job are fixed separately. Chikan embroidery has a repertoire of about 40 stitches of which about 30 are still being used.

These can be broadly divided into 3 heads – flat stitches, raised and embossed stitches, and the open trellis-like jaali work. Some of these have equivalents in other embroideries, the rest are manipulations that make them distinctive and unique. They cover almost all the embroidery stitches of the country and have interesting and descriptive names.

The main flat stitches with their traditional names are: Taipchi: Running stitch worked on the right side of the fabric. It is occasionally done within parallel rows to fill petals and leaves in a motif, called ghaspatti. Sometimes taipchi is used to make the bel buti all over the fabric. This is the simplest chikan stitch and often serves as a basis for further embellishment. It resembles jamdani and is considered the cheapest and the quickest stitch. Pechni: Taipchi is sometime used as a base for working other variations and pechni is one of them. Here the taipchi is covered by entwining the thread over it in a regular manner to provide the effect of something like a lever spring and is always done on the right side on the cloth.

Pashni: Taipchi is worked to outline a motif and then covered with minute vertical satin stitches over about two threads and is used for fine finish on the inside of badla. Bakhia: It is the most common stitch and is often referred to as shadow work. It is of two types: (a) Ulta Bakhia: The floats lie on the reverse of the fabric underneath the motif. The transparent muslin becomes opaque and provides a beautiful effect of light and shade. (b) Sidhi Bakhia: Satin stitch with criss-crossing of individual threads. The floats of thread lie on the surface of the fabric. This is used to fill the forms and there is no light or shade effect.

Khatao, khatava or katava is cutwork or appliqu? – more a technique than a stitch. Gitti: A combination of buttonhole and long satin stitch, usually used to make a wheel-like motif . Jangira: Chain stitch usually used as outlines in combination with a line of pechni or thick taipchi. The bolder or knottier stitches include the following: Murri: A very minute satin stitch in which a knot is formed over already outlined taipchi stitches. Phanda: It is a smaller shortened form of murri. The knots are spherical and very small, not pear shaped as in murri. This is a difficult stitch and requires very good craftsmanship. Jaalis: The jaalis or trellises that are created in chikankari are a unique speciality of this craft. The holes are made by manipulation of the needle without cutting or drawing of thread. The threads of the fabric are teased apart to make neat regular holes or jaalis. In other centres where jaalis are done, the threads have to be drawn out.

In chikankari, this is not the case. Names of jaali techniques suggest the place where they originated from — Madrasi jaali or Bengali jaali —- or possibly the place of demand for that particular jaali. The basic manner in which jaalis are created is by pushing aside wrap and weft threads in a fashion that minute openings are made in the cloth. Shape of openings and the stitches used distinguish one jaali from another. The source of most of the design motifs in chikankari is Mughal. Noor Jehan’s personal preferences and desire to replicate the Turkish architectural open-work designs is said to have that led to the introduction of jaalis in chikan embroidery. The designs in chikan are graded and used according to the stitches employed – murri ka buta and tepchi ka jaal — though terms like hathi (elephant) and kairi (mango) are also used to signify the shape of the motif. It is however the stitch employed that is the established nomenclature.

The production process of a chikan garment, assuming it is a kurta, goes through several processes. In each process a different person is involved. The final responsibility is, however, that of the person ordering the manufacture, who is also usually the seller. Chikan work involves several stages. The fabric is cut by the tailor into the required garment shape, after which the basic pre-embroidery stitching is done so that the correct shape is available to the block-printer to plan the placement of the design. The design is printed on the semi-stitched garment with fugitive colours, and the embroidery of the garment is then begun. After completion, the article is checked carefully since most defects can be detected at first glance. However, the finer flaws surface only after washing.

The washing is done in a bhatti, after which the garment is then starched and ironed. The whole cycle can take from one to six months. Originally, chikan embroidery was done with white thread on soft, white cotton fabric like muslin or cambric. It was sometimes done on net to produce a kind of lace. Today chikan work is not only done with coloured threads but on all kinds of fabrics like silk, crepe, organdie chiffon, and tassar.

- Mamta Mantri

mamta@archedu.org

Excerpts from the book “Traditional Indian Textiles” by John Gillow and Nicholas Barnard

Natural dyes are either substantive or adjective. Substantive dyes need no mordant to fix the colour to the cloth fibre and sources include certain lichens, the bark and heartwood of trees and, most importantly, the indigo shrub, Indigofera tinctoria. Historically of great commercial value, this indigo species yields more than thirty times the quantity of the blue dye agent indicant than the plants endemic to the West and further to the east. The indigo bush is found throughout India. At its peak of international popularity, however, its supply was most closely associated with market towns of Sarkhej near Ahmedabad and Biana, south-west of Agra.

The dye is processed by way of and exacting technique which leaves little margin for error. Indigo itself is not soluble in water. To dye cloth, the precipitate from the immersed leaves of the indigo plant is mixed with an alkaline solution to create ‘indigo white’ . The cloth or yarn is then dipped in such a solution, and colours blue as the white indigo oxidized on contact with the atmosphere. A repeated dipping into the vat darkens the blue colour. Although fast, the indicant merely coats the surface of the fibres of the cloth; it therefore tends to rub off and is prone to leaching when washed.

Adjective dyes require a mordant for any degree of permanency. Mordents include the metallic salts of alum, chrome, iron and tin as well as salt, vinegar, caustic soda, slaked lime, urine and the compounds or solutions of certain leaves, fruits and wood ash. The Indian dyers are famous for their skilful use of alum and iron metallic salts that capture the elusive colours of red and black. Red is achieved by combining a source material of the colouring substance alizarin with alum, the results ranging from pink to deep red. By mixing an acidic solution of iron – often just rusty scrap – with tannin or jiggery, black dye is created. Such iron mordants have the unfortunate quality of biting rather too hard on natural fibres, thereby rotting the black of a woven or embroidered pattern.

Red dyeing with a mordant is complex. It is a wonder that the many chemical interactions required should have been developed at all, and that the secrets of the trade then not divulged to European interlopers until the seventeenth century. A crucial step in the mordanting procedure is the treatment of the yarn or cloth with an oily or fatty substance, and afterwards with an astringent such as time. This prevents the subsequent addition of the mordant, alum, from drying on the cloth and crystallizing. The red colouring agent alizarin may then be added.

One of the common sources of alizarin lies within the dreied root of the madder plant, Rubia tinctoria, and its elative Rubia munjista. In Sanskrit, the plant is known as ‘madhur’ . Of equal importance as sources of alizarin were the indigenous shrubs and trees of the Morinda genus, and the plant Oldenlandia umbellate. The dyestuff from the roots of the Morinda citrifolia and M. coreia, as well as M. augustifolia, M. bracteata, M. tormentosa, M. umbellate and M. tinctoria, is known as ‘al’, ‘ach’, and ‘surangi’. M. citrifolia was formerly cultivated as a field crop on an extensive scale throughout India and the shrub dug up when three or four years old. The colouring matter is found in the young root bark and mature tree rots are discarded as worthless. After chipping the roots, the free acids are removed by washing in water. A neutral morinda root solution, when well mordanted, has a dyeing power that excels that of the madder.

The root of Oldenlandia umbellate (commonly known as ‘chay’) was another significant dye source root-crop. Grown throughout the same region, the chay that was cultivated on calcic soils was found to yield a superior dye. The seashell-rich rivurine deltas such as the Kistna were therefore favoured for chay cultivation. The root of the growing plant absorbed the calcium which, after processing, added a bright and almost luminous quality to the red colour.

The well-known condiment turmeric, from the perennial herb Curcuma longa, has had its uses over the centuries as a fugitive yellow dye source. The rhizomes of the plant contain curcumin, a sharp yellow colouring agent that readily dissolves in water. Easy to use, but not durable, turmeric is used in combination with other more subtle dyes as bright colour wash for such textiles as the memorable turbans of the north-west of India, and as a top coat of ye to create secondary colours such as green. Yellow colouring of a more permanent nature is achieved by mixing a boiled soulution of the flowers of the myrobalan tree (of the Combretacease family, akin to the myrtles) with mango tree bark and an alum solution to form a mordant. A semi-fast green colour is commonly obtained by coating blue dye with the myrobalan. Thr fruit of the myrobalan is a source of tannin.

- Mamta Mantri

mamta@archedu.org

The flowers of the hardy annual plant safflower, Carthamus tinctorus, enjoy a long history as a dyer’s drug, both in the Subcontinent and further west, through the Middle East to Europe. The petals yield a fugitive yellow and, after treatment with alkalis, a fine ponceau colour especially suitable for silk.

Understand the process of making a Patola in Gujarat

http://thecuriouseye.blogspot.com/2009/08/celebrated-double-ikat-weavers-of-patan.html

- Mamta Mantri

mamta@archedu.org