IN WHICH WE BUY EMBROIDERIES–PART V
It occurs to me that before I can begin writing about our holiday week London trip, complete with meet-up with Elder Daughter, plus all sorts of interesting sights at various museums, historical places, and theater performances, I have to finish my posts about our November trip to Agra and Delhi. Apologies for the delay, I plead computer woes, spotty connectivity, and ennui (in no particular order).
Here’s the prize piece from our big India trip – a tamboured Pashmina jacket, made in Kashmir, but purchased in Agra.
It is one of the nicest, most finely worked tambour items I’ve handled. The colors in these shots are pretty true, but they glow a bit more in person. The golds, oranges, reds, and browns twinkle against the cobalt blue ground. The edging isn’t trim – it’s more densely packed tambour work, done on the same piece of cloth as the scrolling vines of the main body. The buttons are cloth, covered with more stitching. The thread is all Pashmina wool, too. No metallics or glitter. You can see the surface sheen from the fine, densely packed chain stitches in the button placket.
I will say that this was an indulgent gift from The Resident Male – the price made me giddy, even after he bargained it down from the stratosphere. But for work of this quality, the price was fair. I adore my luxury present, and am looking forward to wearing it in cooler climates.
I am still looking for other good examples of Indian needlework, more within my budget. Sadly, as with so many handcrafts, bad drives out good. Since most of the tourist market does not recognize or reward quality craftsmanship, artisans pursue greater revenue and higher volume over better artifacts.
Pieces that show skill and solid artisanry are few and far between, but I’ve seen endless piles of poorly stitched shisha (mirror) work cushions, sloppy satin stitch hangings that look like they were done in one evening, and beadwork that sheds its sequins after a light shake. I can’t fault the makers – they are pressed to provide income for their families. But I won’t buy those things, either. So the hunt continues…
IN WHICH WE BUY EMBROIDERIES–PART IV
I’m not done yet!
Here’s another piece we found on our Delhi/Agra trip. This came from a dealer in Agra, and not the fair trade market in Delhi.
This is a patchwork wall hanging. It’s sort of in Crazy Quilt style, although the piece is one huge block, roughly 4 feet x 2 feet. It’s made up of fragments of highly embellished antique textiles, much of it overdyed in black; plus some newer pieces to eke things out. The fragments are appliqued to totally cover a background, and that ground cloth is in turn backed by another heavier cotton cloth. There is minimal quilting between the layers to hold them together – mostly some tacking stitches along the rolled borders between the fragments.
Close up you can see the amount of beadwork, sequins, gold stitching and other encrustations:
The dealer had several like this. Believe it or not – this was the plainest. It was also the one in best condition. One problem with antique pieces is that often the cloth is not stable. Silk is friable, and crackles with age. All the more so when it has been overdyed. Threads securing hand-hammered sequins or rough edged metal beads can break easily. I looked long and hard at the five offerings, and picked the one in the best shape from a curator’s perspective.
The number of techniques in this piece is hard to estimate. There’s tambour in silk, cotton and metal threads; beadwork and sequins applied in myriad ways; satin stitch, laid couching of various types; buttonhole stitch; something very much like or nuée, with gold threads affixed with colored silks in patterns or to create shaded effects; appliqued lace; some very old mirror work (shisha); and heaven knows what else.
The way this piece is put together reminds me a lot of a cherished gift at home. Jackie of the late and lamented Wild & Woolly, gave me this knitting bag for services rendered when I helped her with a major home reorganization:
It’s also of Indian origin, assembled patchwork style from small pieces of sari borders and other embroidered snippets. In this case the backing fabric is cotton velour, instead of heavy flat-woven matte-finish cotton. I have a feeling that this bag is somehow related to the black hanging, if only distantly.
But as jaw-dropping as the black piece is, it’s not our ultimate acquisition (so far). You’ll have to wait until the next post to see that!
IN WHICH WE BUY MORE TEXTILES–PART III
O.k. So technically, these aren’t embroideries. But they are still textiles.
Among the various indulgent purchases we made on our Agra-Delhi vacation was this Kashmiri rug, bought after much hard bargaining from a traditional Smiling Rug Merchant:
The bargaining is part of the theater. I don’t believe for a minute the merchant’s protestations that we were taking bread out of the mouths of his children (their graduation photos from US universities were behind his desk), but the play of price, offer, counter offer, reticence and commitment must be played out for any large purchase. It’s like high school dating, but for merchandise.
This piece is a runner, for use in the long hall outside our library. It’s an heirloom quality, all-wool warp hand knotted rug, with long, luxuriant fringes, and dyed with traditional vegetable colors. It’s hard to say how such muted reds and tumerics glow, but they do. We’ll probably leave it out for a couple of days to admire, then roll it back up in its muslin bag to await shipment home with the rest of the household goods, come June.
The next day we bought some woven pieces at Dilli Haat as gifts and souvenirs.
The small woven bags and coasters are cotton and straw. The four larger hobo-style soft tote bags are cotton with inset hand-woven bands. If my notes are correct, these are backstrap-loom produced pieces from Nagaland, near Assam.
[UPDATE] I’ve done some research on the small woven straw clutches. I didn’t write down the region of origin when I bought them, but I’ve now pegged them to the c0astal region of Orissa. They are made of sabai grass and cotton, and are part of an economic initiative that assists families in flood-ravaged areas reclaim economic self-sufficiency.
These smaller items we did not bargain for, other than putting together a group and asking for a price for the larger purchase, rather than toting up each item individually. All were quite reasonably priced, and sold as they were by the village or guild co-ops, we were happy to provide fair recompense directly to the crafting artisans themselves.
I’m not done yet. There are more pix of textiles to come. And if you want to see the larger sights of our trip, the husband has posted an excellent two-parter on our trip to the Taj Mahal.
IN WHICH WE BUY EMBROIDERIES–PART II
Here’s the second group of purchases.
These are three cushion covers and three small glasses-case-sized pouches, all done in pattern darning. We also got these in Dilli Haat, in Delhi; from a Government-registered ethnic arts stall. In this case, the pieces were done by a Toda cooperative. The Toda people are from South India in the Niligiri Hills and surrounding areas. Their traditional culture is pastoralist, centering on dairy herds.
Their stitching, seen on a Toda’ woman’s outfit below, has been adapted for retail sale. The Dilli Haat vendor was selling the square cushions and small bags I bought, plus tote bags, larger throws, and bolster cushion covers (think cylinders, with the stitching going around the circumference).
Image credit for the lady above: 6 Assago via the Fair Trade Forum – India, which also works with Toda cooperatives to market their crafts.
Anyone who is familiar with my love of black, red and white geometrical stitching will know I was especially delighted to find these pieces. It will be difficult for me to part with any of them, even though I bought them as gifts.
In terms of technical specs, the white ground cloth is a bit like Aida cloth, even weave with a well defined “stitch here” hole structure; at roughly 20 doubled threads per inch. The thread used looks to be an acrylic lace-weight plied yarn. It’s a bit friable, so gentle care is in order to minimize surface fuzzing. The pouches and cushion covers are lined, so seeing the reverse is problematic.
Now, there are several embroidery styles in India that use pattern darning. For example, Kasuthi also employs Negi (weaving) stitch for individual stand-alone motifs or for borders in which the stitches form the foreground. But the Toda style is a bit different. It’s characterized by strips of uniform patterning, with the stitching making up a solid background against which the unworked ground cloth peeps through in geometric designs.
And I love it.
IN WHICH WE BUY EMBROIDERIES – PART I
Just back from a five-day Diwali break trip to Agra and Delhi. In Agra we toured the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, Ram Bagh (a magnificent Mughal era garden), and Chini Ka Rauza (mausoleum of Shah Jehan’s prime minister Afzal Khan Aalmi, himself a noted poet). In Delhi, we did a hilarious, whirlwind auto-rickshaw tour of Government center area, including the India Gate, houses of Parliament, and the embassy area; then a day in the National Museum, the Crafts Museum (a must-see if you are a weaving or textiles fan), the Red Fort, and at the end – a shopping trip to Dilli Haat. If you are ever in Delhi, insist on going to Dilli Haat. Your driver may try to steer you to a different crafts or souvenir store, but stand firm. You’ll find better quality goods at much lower prices, and without the “foreigner tax” so often encountered elsewhere.
The week was unforgettable, and I’m sure I’ll be posting some select tourist pix over the coming week. But folk here are reading for needlework content, so I’ll lead with that.
I wanted to bring home examples of Indian needlecraft that are a bit more interesting than the usual items sold to tourists – the hastily stitched pieces of sketchy construction in lurid colors. I had wanted to find examples of Kasuthi, of course, but so far, I haven’t. Perhaps when we go a bit south in Maharashtra later in the spring I’ll find some. But other than the iconic piece at the National Museum, pictured on the cover of my Kasuthi book, I haven’t seen a single example. Nor did I find quality shisha (mirror) work, although I did see a couple of pieces locally here in Pune that I may go back to buy. In crafts, like in all other areas of economic opportunity, bad drives out good. It’s hard to find honest quality pieces when less well executed items command the same price. But I did look hard, and we did buy several items, almost all from government designated regional or ethnic artisanal cooperatives in fair trade markets or sponsored cooperative stores. Here is the first selection:
My dodo curtain. Now anyone can find elephants or peacocks,even tigers, on cloth here. They’re everywhere. But this cotton curtain (about the size of a king size bedspread) is totally covered with roundels inhabited by dodos. Why dodos, I haven’t a clue. But in addition to the pudgy charm of the off-beat motifs, it was the best stitched and best composed of the large pieces I saw. My big disappointment is that I didn’t get a provenance on it, but I suspect Uttar Pradesh from the style:
The pictures above look rather pinkish, but the actual background color is more dun than salmon or orchid. The dodos are worked in tambour-worked chain stitch in gold and brick, olive and mustard perle cotton on a double-thick cotton ground, then heavily washed. The sequins are affixed along the lines of the gold stitching. That along with the treatment of threads on the back clinches the working method for me.
I hope to mount this as a room divider curtain on a brass rod between our living room and dining room. Long ago there was just such a brass rod in that wide opening, and now I have something worthy of replacing it.
Long live the dodo!
KASHMIRI TAMBOUR-EMBROIDERED CARPET
Mary Corbet over at Needle n’ Thread has just posted an interesting piece contrasting tambour needle produced chain stitch with the same stitch produced by a traditional threaded needle. She notes the speed, density and coverage factor of tambour stitching. I present a truly huge sample to corroborate her observations.
I have an entire room-size floor carpet done in tambour work.
For those of you who don’t know what tambour is, it’s a method of producing an even embroidery stitch with a chained appearance, by plunging a hook through a base fabric, catching a loop of decorative thread, then repeating the process to create a line. The hook used (called arhi, here) looks a bit like a fine crochet hook, but the end of the hook is a bit more pointed, to make piercing the ground fabric easier. Mary offers up some excellent discussions of the technique, so I’ll skip doing so.
In any case, Mary’s piece made me think about the rug we recently purchased:
This piece is roughly 6’ x 9’ (1.8 x 2.7 meters). Everything you see here is stitching. The white cotton ground is totally covered by vibrant, dense-pack chain stitch in jewel colored cotton:
By getting close up with my gauge square, I can see that the stitch count varies between 10 and 12 stitches per inch, with the longer stitches being in the plain areas like the simple straight pink and brown runs at the bottom of the detail, above. For width, about three rows of stitching equals 1/3 of an inch, with the longer stitch areas being a bit narrower in addition to leggier. Perhaps the less skilled stitchers were assigned the boring border areas, and the more skilled artisans did the intricate motifs. In any case, because of the variability of stitch length and some small mistakes here and there, I am pretty confident that this rug was done by hand and not with a sewing machine.
If I flex the heavy canvas ground cloth, I can see some pencil lines behind the stitching that mark off major design areas, but not every area or motif is indicated. Finally, the entire piece is backed with another layer of cotton sheeting, slightly thinner than the natural color ground cloth.
Our rug came from the Kashmiri area further north, the source of so many of the handcrafts available here in Pune. It’s a bit unusual because this type of stitching is more commonly done in wool. Namdas for example, are tambour stitched rugs worked in wool (or sometimes today, wool/acrylic blend or even cotton) on a felted wool ground cloth. I’ve seen them both here, and occasionally in import stores in the US.
Back to our carpet – how long did it take to make? Tambour is speedy, but 6’ x 9’ is a huge amount of handwork. The crafts merchant who sold it to us said that these pieces were the product of family manufacture. It typically takes several people (I’m thinking four to six, more can’t easily fit around the cloth to work) about two weeks to make one this size. I base this on the fact that he says one family can produce between two and four big pieces per month. Ours was one of the largest. Most of the other samples of cotton tambour were about half this size. To my stitcher’s eye, ours was also the most accomplished of the four available cotton rugs. It was the most evenly and densely stitched, with the best color balance and patterning.
The stitched surface is holding up nicely to moderate traffic, although we are careful with it. We do not wear shoes in the house, and I do not subject this piece to the vacuum. Instead I light surface sweep with a soft plastic broom, and supplement that with occasional shake-outs. Thankfully, nothing has spilled on it. Yet.
We bought this piece because we fell in love with the brilliant color, intricate patterning; and because I appreciated the skill that it took to produce, and the magnitude of labor it represents. It’s time and care, rendered in cotton, and will be one of my favorite keepsakes, long after we return home.
KEEPING BUSY
In all of this observational and research posting what’s been missing has been reporting on my own projects.
I’ve been busy since finishing the Ganeshji piece. I’ve finished Younger Daughter’s red pullover:
Purists will note that we ended up eliminating the belled lower sleeves. They ended up being a bit too much for India’s climate. The thing fits quite nicely. My only caution is that in the chosen cotton DK it’s quite warm.
I also knit up a small teddy bear as an as-yet ungiven gift. I used the free Berroco Foliage Bear pattern, and Bernat Mosaic on US #9 (5.5mm) needles. There’s enough in one skein of multicolor Mosaic to knit at least one more bear of this size. Stuffing was cannibalized from an inexpensive throw pillow bought at the local supermarket; crafts stores and virgin stuffing materials not being exactly common in Pune.
Special thanks to long time needlework pal and multi-century enabler Kathryn, who gave me this wildly bright acrylic skein to share with my kids. I sheepishly admit that it crept into my backpack, and I diverted it to my own use.
I also finished yet another pair of socks. I’ve taken to knitting at the bus stop while waiting with Younger Daughter in the morning. This pair is done, and there is another behind it, well along on the needles:
It’s my standard figure-8 cast-on, toe-up sock, but done on log-huge US #1s – 64 stitches around. The lacy meander on the side is from the first Duchrow collection (page 35). I’ve used it before on a baby blanket. These stripy blue socks are also meant as a gift, along with the men’s pair I’m working on now.
And I’ve started doodling with Kasuthi embroidery. I’ve got a large piece of somewhat even-weave fabric. Big enough to make a half dozen napkins. So I am doing a different motif, totally double sided, on each one. I will stitch all six motifs, then cut apart the cloth and hem the napkins. Motif Number One is complete:
You can see the stepwise logic of the filling pattern in the star flower’s petals. The resemblance to stepwise Western band patterns (like Jane Seymour’s famous cuffs and Anna Meyer’s sleeves) is even more pronounced in Kasuthi border/edging designs. A couple of those are on deck for future napkins. But first, I’ve GOT to do one of the traditional elephants…
UNTIL THE COWS COME HOME
We’ve all heard the expression “You’ll be doing that until the cows come home.”
But when exactly is that?
It turns out that on this street there’s a small herd of Indian Urban Cows. They commute each day to local grazing, much like the businessmen in the surrounding high rise buildings go back and forth to work. Our street’s five cows amble out and back, shepherded by a guy on a bicycle (or occasionally on foot).
Having tracked the data, I can now say exactly what time they come home.
Roughly at around 4:30pm.
Here’s the data for October:
Amusingly, you can see that the trendline correlates with the slowly shortening days, as the sun rises later and sets earlier as the month progresses.
So if someone says that a task won’t be finished “Until the cows come home,” you can pipe up and say, “I’ll be back at 4:30 to pick it up.”
Another mystery of the ages, put to bed by scientific observation.
THE TWAIN DO MEET
That old adage “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” is hogwash. The more I nose around and see new things, the more echoes and possible connections turn up.
First it was the early modelbooks, mostly German and Italian of the early 1500s, some of which appear to have copied textiles or ornament from further south and east. In TNCM, I pointed out that some designs in Schonsperger’s 1526 Ein Neu Modelbuch were possible transcriptions of Islamic Kufic script, often used in woven and stitched Tiraz bands (TNCM 18:2). A knit cushion from the tomb of Fernando de la Cerda of Castile (d. 1275) is another example of similar script (Richard Rutt, History of Hand Knitting,1987, p. 41, and TNCM 18:4).
The Islamic link in elaborate stepped double running stitch embroidery – the precursor to European blackwork strapwork styles – is now well documented. The talented Mathilde Eisenbach presents a summary and samples of Medieval Egyptian counted work (among others).
But it didn’t start there. Double running stitch done in steps and little squares may well have its origins further east, and European style blackwork most definitely has an Indian cousin, with its own long and murky history.
It’s pretty obvious that double running stitch is one of the simplest of all embroidery stitches. It can be used both on the count and “free” to produce linear designs of all types, with the advantage of producing double-sided work. Most of the strapwork and counted styles I favor lean upon it heavily, either alone, or in combo with other stitches. I’ve often noted its persistence through time and across distance. It’s so common a stitch that it’s extremely difficult to say its use in one locale or culture predates another, but it’s so tempting to find parallels and relationships among its various incarnations.
First, time out for megathanks to new knitting/stitching penpal Jayashree Madan Gopal, who took the time to get me started on this path.
Meet Kasuthi (Kasuti, Kashida), an embroidery style now practiced as a traditional art in Karnataka, India. This style is not very well known in the West, with the phrase “Indian embroidery” more often invoking thoughts of shisha mirror work, tambour chain stitch, or shadow work. But it should be better known, especially among those interested in the historical roots and cousins of European Medieval and Renaissance stitching.
Kasuthi embroidery is a style that many sources claim dates back to Persian influences in the 7th century, which found a home in the northern Karnataka region. According to Jayashree’s research, it spread during the Chalukya period, and was considered one of the fine arts of accomplishment (the 64 Kalas). Kasuthi embroidery, also called Karnatak Kashida, is still practiced widely today, traditionally worked on bridal saris, cholis (sari blouses) given to expectant mothers, and in contemporary works – shawls, bedspreads, cushion covers and other decorative textiles and wearables.
Many of the designs used in Kasuthi have become traditional motifs – recognizable icons with commonly accepted names linked to flowers, birds, animals, architecture (temples) and devotional items.
Kasuthi incorporates double running, squared stitches (DR done in squares or as tiered step diagonals); pattern darning; and cross stitches. Although it’s totally geometrical, and has strong associations with its counted thread origins, today’s Kasuthi is not always worked on a discernible even weave ground. It is occasionally done stitched freehand, on fine silk grounds, following markings. The following images have been shamelessly reposted from various sites – please click on them to be taken to their sources:
In a research paper shared by Jayashree, she and Anita Choudapurkar outline some early history of Kasuthi. Their findings are abstracted below.
Karnataka is an area on the west side of India, inland from the Goa region, and north of Mysore and Bangalore. The region famous for the stitching is closer to Goa than Bangalore. Persian influences were strong in this area’s Chalukyan empire, in the 7th century. Jayashree/Anita’s paper discusses the transmutation of these influences into the Kasuthi style, incorporating elements of ritual architecture, religious symbolism and ornament, and the style’s codification into a cherished folk tradition.
Like many traditional styles of ornament, Kasuthi motifs are conservatively interpreted over time, and “collectable,” in that they are recognizable, and often bear specific names and associations. An excellent collection of motifs is presented in the book Karnataki Kashida by Anita Chawadapurkar (yes, the same person who co-authored the paper above, spellings of transliterated names often vary), and Menaka Prakashan.
The only drawback of this magnificent little volume is that it is written in Marathi. I hope to find someone to read and translate parts of it for me, soon.
For the record, I bought my copy at a local Crosswords, which is Pune’s shopping mall bookstore, similar to a B. Dalton, or Barnes & Noble in the US and didn’t order from the hyperlinked site, above.
For your further delectation, on line collections of Kasuthi motifs and/or work samples can be found at
- IsisCat/Maya Heath
- Sarah’s Hand Embroidery Tutorials
- Mridula Nagarajan
- Indus Ladies
- Click Hubli.com
- Komal53
- Kasuti Tutorial
- Story of Kannadiga, Kannada and Karnata
Now, how does this style link in with Western blackwork? If I had to posit, I’d say that the northern Persian origin is highly plausible. A good many things spread through the same area during the rough time window cited by Jayashree’s paper: stirrups, and chess are two examples of this cultural and technological “bundle.” I would not be surprised to find that the Ur-ancestor of Kasuthi was part of that migration.
I suggest that the ancestor style made its way down to India, and over trade routes to the Levant and Egypt, where it informed other styles that persisted over long spans of time. For example, here’s an Egyptian snippet of the 13th to 16th century, in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. And here is my re-use of the pattern on a book cover:
Aside: I stitched this while I was on my first trip to India. As I worked in the hotel lobby waiting for my car, two people asked me if I had taken a class in Kasuthi work, and whether I was in India to study it, since I was so obviously working on some.
From the eastern Mediterranean across North Africa, and up trade routes to the wreckage of Byzantium, across the Aegean – these are also established vectors of trade and cultural dissemination. I would not be surprised to find double running stitch traditions further east on the Silk Road, too.
After wandering the world paralleling conquest, trade, and the Islamic expansion, double running stitch hitchhiked into Britain, where it undoubtedly was already known. But it was “rebranded” as Spanish Stitch or Spanish Work – popularized through association with the Spanish princess and first bride of Henry VIII, Katherine of Aragon. We often know it under the name Holbein Stitch, named after the court painter who depicted it with exact detail on so many portraits.
So, after our own long wander – we see a possible pan-cultural spread of a stitching style, in which many now separately named types of embroidery have common roots. Would that people today recognize a similar fraternity of time and origin…
THANK YOU, FLIGHT ENGINEER NYBERG
I can’t get over how cool this is:
Credit: This is a NASA photo, of the stuffed dinosaur Karen Nyberg sewed on the International Space Station. This little T-Rex is floating weightless now, but by mid-November when the crew returns, will be a present for Nyberg’s 3-year old son. There’s more on this here.
I said on Facebook that this was cooler than Alan Shepherd’s golf shot on the moon. That was certainly neat, but it was a one-off – almost performance art. This is tangible, and more meaningful on so many levels.
First, this little toy, made by a parent far away from children presents an immediate and personal connection to far-flung families working through voluntary or enforced separation.
As a product of a traditional female craft floating in a world of shiny engineering, it makes a statement to millions of women and girls, who are often told that they have to choose between hard science or the softer pursuits. It’s not an either/or world out there. You CAN be an astronaut and sew for fun.
It’s entertainment – doing the familiar in an unfamiliar environment for stress abatement. That’s something I can certainly identify with, having taken a mini-stash of stitching and knitting supplies with me here to India.
It’s creativity and the boundless urge to make something out of what little is at hand. The ingenuity of making a toy from the unlikeliest of scrounged discards is admirable.
It’s whimsical, and adorable (and very nicely stitched). It speaks of a charming sense of humor, and of a very happy little boy. And for all I know, it may be a sly nod to the Dr. Who episode “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”.
It’s a tangible that will come home with Flight Engineer Nyberg, and (as long as it lasts) be a reminder of where she was able to go. It’s an heirloom of her house now, a priceless and totally unique souvenir of her achievements.
Finally Mr. Saurus is a statement that space is a new normal – a place where people will increasingly commute to work, and come home again. “I’m from Iowa, I only work in space” – brought to life off the movie screen.
So thank you Ms. Nyberg! You’ve made my day!
String-Or-Nothing 