It dissappeared
Rabindranath Tagore and his World of Colours – An article by Ketaki Kushari Dyson
We followed up the leads given by Parimoo on the Bauhaus exhibition in Calcutta in 1922 as best as we could. People in charge of the Bauhaus archives (now in Berlin) believe that Tagore visited the Bauhaus school in Weimar in 1921, but we have not been able to unearth any documentary evidence in support of this. It is, however, very plausible that Tagore did play a role in the arrangement of the Calcutta exhibition. His reputation in Germany was then at its peak, and a request in his name would have undoubtedly facilitated the despatch of the exhibits to Calcutta. We have considered the whole art ambience in Calcutta within which such an exhibition became possible, and the warm reception it received. As is known, the exhibits were never returned to the Bauhaus school. That remains a mystery and a scandal.
Design Today in America and Europe
Exhibition “Design Today in America and Europe”, 1959(PDF)
The Vice President of India, Dr* S. Radhakrishnan, will open an exhibition in New. Delhi on Friday, January 16, called “Design Today In America, and Europe*
Design Today in America and Europe 1958
Trying to get my hands on this catalog.
Ursus Books and Prints
Design Today in America and Europe
DREXLER, ARTHUR. Design Today in America and Europe. 90 pages, illustrated in b&w. Small, oblong 4to, wraps. New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1958.
Exhibition assembled by MoMA for display in India.
Indira Gandhi’s imprimatur was felt everywhere
It was not till the 1960s that there was a large-scale revolution in urban middle-class taste. Government intervened through a network of organisations (Handloom House, Handloom & Handicrafts Corporation, Weaver’s Service centres, Cottage Industries, National Institute of Design etc) and Indira Gandhi’s imprimatur was felt everywhere. Prime minister for 12 years, she was keen on design and marshalled taste-makers of the order of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, Pupul Jayakar, Charles Correa, Ahmedabad’s Sarabhai family and their cultural inheritors such as Martand Singh and Rajeev Sethi. Indian arts, crafts and textiles were wheeled out at trade fairs abroad and foreign designers were honoured guests at home. Up-to-date India was doffing its cap at international design, dictated from above.
Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India
The place where Pupul Jayakar meets Eames?
Alexander Girard – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Exhibition design,”Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India”Museum of Modern Art (1954)
Melbourne Design Guide
As a guide to design in the city of Melbourne – this is quite good.
Melbourne Design Guide
Designer Survey
If you are a member of the Facebook group ‘Simply India’ or are here to help out Alice Ciccolini and Soumitri Varadarajan with their project – then thanks for making the effort and taking the time out to come here. If you have received an email asking you to come here to complete the survey – then thanks for taking time out to do this.
You will find the link to the survey below. The survey has been designed for you to fly through it – mostly. There are just two questions that require you to slow down a bit, mull about your answer and type it in.
The Survey: Click on this link – survey here – to access the online survey.
NOTE: This survey is not to collect personal information. The primary purpose of the survey is to get information on the design scene in India and the kinds of things that are important to designers in India.
More … The survey is being advertised through facebook, email and a small word of mouth project. It is imagined that we will be able to compile the results of the survey – which would be very interesting of course – sometime in August.
Theme 2: Immersion in craft
I am slowly sketching out the theme – immersion in craft. Many of the posts till this points have been about this.
So whats going on?
In simple terms quite a few things: firstly, there is the government as the agency and the discourse of development. A government official or politician is a key figure in the way ‘craft development’ gets a political voice and she/he does a very good job of articualting the role the state can play in looking after craft and crafts people. Design plays a role, which is quite secondary in this discourse. On occasion this voice criticizes the designer for dealing casually with what is a livelihood issue. Should designers go in and work on craft objects for an alien culture or should they design for local consumption has been argued from both positions. The NGO voice in this is primarily focussed upon a business perspective of ensuring livlihoods and being aware of the needs of the market. Secondly, there is the conservationist perspective – I use Morris as a figure for this – where the discourse eyes watering down of tradition warily. The negotiation of change takes up much time and space. Thirdly, there is the technical perspective looking at craft as ways and techniques. And finally, there is the cultural-aesthetic perspective where the craft artefact is the way craft is entered into.
The question for me now is; do I have a four part model to classify and speak about design projects, change and the evolution of the designer’s engagement with craft in India?
The writings of Jaya Jaitley
First a bit from the Hindu of 2003. This past week, Teej was celebrated with `traditional’ pomp and gaiety at Dilli Haat, which was decked up as fine as the comeliest damsel for the occasion. Hosted by Delhi Tourism Development Corporation, the celebration had a special guest – Jaya Jaitley. But how can Jaya Jaitley be called a guest at a place that owes its existence to her? It is more like a welcome homecoming. Not keen on partaking the lavish high tea, she says she accepted the invitation to the Teej festival because she simply likes coming to this place and meeting the artisans from across India who have shops here. But whoever heard of an Indian festival without food? The tables at Dilli Haat’s Teej celebration groan under the weight of a number of dishes, supplied by Gopal Desai who runs the Rajasthan food stall here, under the Rajasthan State Hotel Corporation. The sumptuous fare includes dishes made out corn, the seasonal crop: Savouries like bhutte ke pakore; the soup known as bhutte ka raab (boiled corn ground and cooked in mattha – buttermilk) and bhutte ki jhaajariya. Then there are ghenvar, the distinctive Teej sweet made of sugar and flour, moti choor ke laddoo, and drinks like aam ka panna made from unripe mangoes. Other Rajasthani specialties are also on offer, like the dal-baati-choorma combine (in which baatis – small savoury laddoos – are combined with dal and choorma – parathas or besan nuggets that have been pounded or crumbled and sweetened), gatte ki sabzi made of besan chunks, dal, kadi as well as kersangari – five types of sabzi with baajre ki roti – and pyaaz ki kachori. Some confirmed urbanites are of the opinion that the reason each religious festival is associated with special culinary dishes is that edible goodies make the occasion far more worth commemorating than any number of myths and legends. Be that as it may, Jaya Jaitley remarks: “We have very strong traditions associated with our food,” and pointing out the homogeneity of the various aspects of Indian culture, adds: “Each season has its own special food and it is very important to keep that culture, rather than the fast food that is coming up everywhere.” She mentions how at Diwali, for example, the potters get work. Such practices she emphasises, “reinforce the economic systems”. On the hygiene factor that often deters educated customers from indulging in traditional Indian foods and attracts them to the neater looking, packaged foods, she says: “Awareness needs to be increased about hygiene. The public should bring pressure on the people who make this food to use gloves, tongs, etc. to maintain hygiene. A lot of food needs only a cellophane cover to keep it clean. Most Indian food does not create garbage. It is the so-called modern food with its plastics that creates garbage. Actually if you look at our dhabas, they are all clean. The food is fresh and hot.” Known for having provided a fresh catalyst to many a declining art and craft by fusing the talents of traditional artisans with the designs of contemporary artists, her mind travels to the same concept in food, and she recalls her recent visit to Ladakh where she saw locally grown tomatoes being sun dried to provide an elegant saleable commodity. An important feature of Teej is women and girls riding on swings. Jaya Jaitley obliges the crowd by riding on one, along with Najma Heptulla – another special invitee. All in all, it would seem such festivals provide official sanction for women to let their hair down. Of course the customary pound of flesh is extracted too, in the form of a 24-hour fast during which some women do not even sip water. And if the feasting is something to look forward to, it’s not before the women of the household have done all the cooking! But here in Delhi we do everything with a Capital twist, and if you can’t be bothered to sweat it out before you swing, there are always options like Dilli Haat. With Rakshabandhan and Janmashtami round the corner there’s lots to celebrate yet, this monsoon as the rain reigns.
(image from IBN Politics.com)
I am picking out the various threads of the crafts discourse – and will start with the political ( though this particular text is more ‘development’ orientated) perspective. Jaya J holds the position of a political discourse of craft as a viable location of power – and having shared the dias with her I have seen the threads she picks up to amplify. I am also curious to get my hands on this book.
Jaya Jaitly, Crafts as industry
A fascinating shift in the nature of industrialization as also definitions and attitudes concerning the production of goods is taking place as we go into the 15th year of the globalization process. In the area of handmade goods, both crafts and textiles, even as countries like India are learning to convert their weaknesses into strengths, in China mechanization is efficiently organising itself to imitate the hand work of India to encroach upon the market for India’s special skills.It is obvious that such competition comes into play because the demand is palpably out there. In the post-industrialized world, with its multinational production and marketing systems, branded goods and the similarity of products wherever they may be sold, the very non-standardized and multicultural nature of handicrafts provides the competition and welcome contrast.
Obviously the handicrafts sector consisting of the producer, wholesaler, retailer, technicians including designers, and most importantly, the policy-maker, must begin to look at itself as an industry of the non-industrialized, and prepare to gear itself up for the enormous challenge that lies ahead. Industry is merely the organized production of goods arising out of the combined and systematized work of man with machine. Industrialization has conventionally meant the dominance of machine over man and of capital over labour. Crafts in contrast can be termed an industry where the machine does not dominate and its very decentralized structure prevents the exploitation by a capitalist tycoon sitting far away, controlling production and people.
We need no longer be bound by the old attitudes towards what is accurately but slightly condescendingly termed as ‘cottage’ or ‘village’ industry. We have become stultified in an image of industry representing standardized, monotonous, centralized production. If these are the images of the industrial age, we can now alter ourselves for the post-industrial age of informational technology and globalized production of mass-produced goods.
Crafts, by their very nature, are not mass produced. But if people are working with their hands, albeit with the assistance of tools and machines, producing goods required in a wide market space, selling to make profits and thereby contributing to national wealth, crafts can be termed as a decentralized creative industry where the human mind and hand is more important than the small machines and tools they may use. Here the machine is the instrument of the maker, owned by the maker or by the community, and to that extent craft is free of domination and exploitation. There is, therefore, a world of industry without industrialization in the traditional sense, and there is both ample scope and need for this to come out of the disorganized, diminishing and low-end profile that it has been carrying for long.
Rukmini on India
Download Podcast – from ABC Radio National.
Latika’s description of identity prompted me to go looking for another take on the subject. Rukmini too seems to have been at the ABC studios. Hope you enjoy listening to this.
Imagining India with Rukmini Nair – RN Book Show – 15 December 2008
Since independence in 1947, Indians have been debating their identity and the defining characteristics of the world’s largest democracy. Imagining India by Bangalore’s ‘Bill Gates’ Nandan Nilekani, is the latest book that takes ‘Indian-ness’ as its subject. The first was Nehru’s The Discovery of India. The recent violent attacks in Mumbai has refocused attention on India and Professor Rukmini Nair talks about the different visions of India put forward by these writers.
