Rajasthani crafts - hand embroidery and textile trickery

We went to Rajasthan to see textiles, and we had plenty of opportunity to do just that, with varying degrees of orchestration and hidden agendas.

This guy in Jaipur was apparently a textile designer. He showed us a huge variety of stunning hand stitched textiles and bed covers in traditional styles, clearly made by local women. So far so good. This was a slick operation, obviously geared up to bus loads of tourists, and the real shame was that he claimed all this work as his own designs. His catchphrase 'look my art' has become our go-to phrase for whenever we feel we're being ripped off (with a couple of letter changes - use your imagination!).

In Pushkar we looked in what appeared to be a tiny shop which opened out into a huge cave of a room with a Hindu shrine in the centre, surrounded by textiles. 

The quilt below is Punjabi and probably over 100 years old. It was huge and the simple kantha style stitching really complemented the now faded colours.

All over you see wallhangings made from recycled tribal dresses, the embroidery on which is a lost art form. Indeed, the guy in Jaipur had many of them that he claimed to have designed himself. The young guy in the Pushkar shop brought out several and explained which part of India their embroidery came from.

This yellow one contains canvas work with dense areas of shisha mirrors and could well be from Punjab or Pakistan (but I might have made that up) 

Gold thread work from cuffs and bodices in this one comes from a specific region, but I can't remember which now. These were our favourite, being more subtle than the others and often on a dark blue or green background.

These are traditional Rajasthani embroideries, featuring bright colours and shisha mirrors. The shapes of the collars and yokes can still clearly be seen.

Pieces like this are exported, so often seen in England, and it appears that there is an inexhaustible supply of old costumes with which to make them, although that cannot be true. 

This warehouse in Jodhpur (underneath the hugest junk/antiques shop full of incredibly quirky things) was packed to the ceiling with old and new textiles, mostly for export. Their stash certInly beats ours!

It does seem a shame that this is the fate of such beautiful family textiles, but perhaps they were not seen like that by their owners as progress happened. And India is nothing if not expert at recycling everything, so at least they can be appreciated again.

New work is being created for the export market (designers such as Hermes and Miu Miu, and various Italian houses) in the traditional ways, and the manager of the Jodhpur warehouse showed us this selection of bed covers - those at the bottom in this picture are the traditional work, with commissions from design houses in silk and woven throws above.

This is local embroidery worked in the home and would have taken six months to complete, using designs of elephants, camels, butterflies and pineapples.

These beautiful cut-work covers have organdie backings making them translucent; they'd make great curtains.

Below is Rajasthani embroidery with four layers of cut back appliqué - making it quite heavy

and this is complex canvas work with shisha mirrors, taking twelve months to complete.

A stunning Kashmiri throw commissioned for a European design house.

Perhaps the most amazing thing is that items that we could have purchased for around £100 would sell in Europe, the US or Japan for ten times that price. I think the manager thought that we were buyers, so we didn't disabuse him of that idea, but though sorely tempted we managed to leave without buying anything! That was a first!

Rajasthani crafts - carpets and blue pottery

Another day, another 'factory'. 

First the collective in Amber (Amer) where they specialise in carpets and block printing. The word factory is used in its loosest sense, often meaning a room where everyone works on the floor in what we would think of as dreadful conditions. Much of the work is done at home because this allows workers to remain in their community rather than move to a city, and the collective at least ensures workers get a fair price for their work. The looms here were for demonstration but once knotted at home the finishing process was carried out here.

The guide told us that each family has its own traditional 'signature' design, and we are beginning to realise that this is true of so many things. The shop keepers in Delhi proudly displayed photos of their ancestors who traded from the same shop selling the same thing as proof of quality, and whole villages are dedicated to one trade - scrap iron, recycling tyres, quarrying etc.

Anyway, back to the carpets: 

Wool arrives in these big sacks and is hanked up by women using vertical swifts

These carpets are hand-knotted rather than woven, with each thread secured around two warp threads in a figure-of-eight 

before being cut short with the knife

They were happy to let us have a go (for the usual tip) so some poor tourist will end up with our ropey knots in their carpet.

If they are making an intricate pattern it is mapped out on a grid, much like counted cross stitch.

Once complete the carpets are clipped to even up the surface and brushed to remove loose fibres. 

Then the backs are burnt to remove loose fibres and make them rough (non-slip) 

before they are scrubbed to within an inch of their life with soap and these paddles. Apparently the paddles help the fibres lie in one direction so they have a sheen and prevent the wool fibres from felting.

And this is the stunning result, from traditional designs to contemporary ones, wool and beautiful silk. All of these town 'factories' have disproportionately large basements where the very well rehearsed hard sell begins.

Did we succumb? I'm afraid to say we did, but we drove a hard bargain and these guys were very friendly, the helpers (who are usually just there to get out the goods) chatting about their hobbies in broken English (kite flying competitions) and interested in what we did and all things English. The manager said they are hoping to be able to come over for a trade show soon.

On to the Blue Pottery factory - just a yard with several workers in it in the village of Sanganer south of Jaipur. This is the same place that they were block printing bed linen in the earlier post. They did of course have the obligatory basement showing off their 'collection' but no real hard sell.

The pots are made from a mix of clay with quartz, glass and other minerals for hardness. This is presses into a mould and left to dry in the sun before having a coating of slip applied.

These guys are decorating the pots with traditional designs - first the outline is painted with a fine brush, and then the colours are filled in.

We were allowed to have a try, much to the amusement of the workers. The squirrel hair brush has a lot of bounce, and once you get used to how much paint to put on the brush it is possible to vary the thickness of the lines with pressure, making them look elegant.

Once all the decoration is complete the pieces are kiln fired. 

Due to the vagaries of this process a large percentage of the pieces don't come out intact., and it is not possible to predict which ones will be OK.

Not all of the kiln-broken pieces end up on the scrap-heap like this little cow -

some are destined for greater things.

And to try out a new range of tiles what better place than the loo? This must be the poshest washroom in Jaipur!

Jaipur part two - expect the unexpected!

Little did we know it when we set off this morning, but we were in for a surprise.

Bet you have no idea what these structures are: 

Modern art sculptures perhaps?

House facades in a strange film set?

Giant gongs?

Gaudi in India?

Cart wheels for long gone Giants?

Maybe this will give you a clue? There's a scale along the edge of the white marble ...

Or this?

And this?

This place is Jantar Mantar, the observatory of Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, constructed in the early eighteenth century - and it blew our minds!

To think that these huge, beautiful structures were precise astronomical instruments, built to calculate the time, and the positions of the stars and planets, in a time when there were no computers, only painstaking calculations and trial and error, is incredible. It is still possible to tell the time (Jaipur time is 40 minutes different from India time) with this instrument, accurate to 20 seconds

Not content with the accuracy of that, he scaled it up ten-fold to create the largest sundial in the world (it's in the Guinness book of records) - accurate to 2 seconds.

And these use the same principle to look at the position of the sun in the various zodiac constellations for astrological calculations

Not a hundred percent sure what any of these do, but they are amazing, particularly the ones split into two halves for the astronomer to walk into (left) - the two halves fit exactly into each other. Look at the detail of the lines and the shape of the bowl: how did they make them that big and that accurate? As the shadows move round the readings are taken from first one and then the other.

 If you're interested this is the website - http://www.jantarmantar.org/index.html .

The observatory is not always on the main tourist trail, but our guide was keen to take us there and we could see why. After all this, just a short walk away, past the local meeting place,

the City Palace, still home to the Maharaja's modern family, had a lot to live up to.

Same richly patterned decorative architecture,

same colonnades

and terracotta pink walls and ceilings

but this time even more opulent. 

This is a bit like visiting Buckingham Palace, complete with state rooms with thrones and golden ceilings and portraits and photographs of Maharajahs past, a Royal amoury - loved the intricately decorated bone gunpowder horns (no photographs allowed).

The palace is home to a museum of textiles showing examples of the attire of Hindu royalty throughout the ages - fascinating stuff (and after explaining all about the exhibits, whilst we took in he small details, Himmat our guide looked exactly like men in the UK do at quilt shows!).

But the showstopper was this courtyard with four stunning painted gates, all different

This pair were round the corner from the peacocks ...

And on the way out a collection of Royal carriages - the two on the right to carry ladies in public, the one on the left to carry the image of a God; they would be pulled by oxen -

and the story of the Maharajah who was snubbed by the Rolls Royce showroom in London when he went in wearing ordinary dress; incensed and bent on revenge, he returned in full Royal regalia and ordered six cars, paying for them to be delivered to India. Then he gave them to the city council to be used as refuse collection vehicles. Can't imagine that went down well with RR!

Finally huge gates and still more pattern - gold for the inner and patterned brass inlay outer.

After this we set off for lunch again (same place as yesterday, it was so good) and then to the Anokhi Museum of block printing and a couple of 'factories' in Sanganer, an industrial village/ suburb of Jaipur well known for its hand-made paper, block printing and blue pottery.

More in the next instalment.