Textiles from Bengal: A Shared Legacy showcases Bengal’s rich textile heritage
Telegraph | 17 February 2025
Pre-Independence, unified Bengal’s textile legacy included not just the muslin or the jamdani patronised by the royalty but also the everyday cotton sari and gamchha from Santipur and the kantha of folk tradition.
Chikankari, a handiwork from Awadh, was also practised in Bengal on muslin and motifs typical of Benaras were woven in Mirpur, near Dhaka.
Fabrics, swatches, Indo-Portugese embroideries, haji rumals, namabalis, baluchars from private collections in the city, from Surat, Jaipur, Bangladesh, Singapore and beyond are part of Textiles from Bengal: A Shared Legacy, an exhibition at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity.
Inaugurated on January 30, the exhibition, spanning four centuries from 16th century to the present, showcases unified Bengal’s textile heritage. It will be on till March 31.
The exhibition opens with a canopy or kerchief (rumal) of cotton with zari in plain weave with discontinuous supplementary weft inlay that is jamdani, woven in Bengal in the late 18th or early 19th century.
A black mannequin at the centre shows off a tussar skirt, hand-stitched in Bengal and tailored in The Netherlands in the 17th century.
“This is a unique piece that shows how material from Bengal travelled to Europe where it was tailored and probably worn,” said curator Mayank Mansingh Kaul.
Another women’s garment or gown of cotton fabric, hand-stitched in Dhaka and tailored in France in the 18th century, is a delicate piece with ruffles at the top and long pleats that fall from the waist to the floor with puffed long sleeves.
“This is interesting because muslin was usually worn as underwear, it was so sheer. But it seems, the French adopted the fabric for formal dresses,” said Kaul.
Thomas Wardle’s swatch book borrowed from the Botanical Survey of India (BSI), along with Swatch books from Europe from the collection of Rajasthan Fabrics and Arts, show different fabrics like moonga silk embroidered with cotton, cotton with embroidered silk border and other materials.
A cream and brown batik sari from Santiniketan of the mid-20th century era is from the collection of Umang Huteesing in Ahmedabad.
A cotton Begambahar sari from Bangladesh with a fine red border from the collection of Ruby Palchoudhuri contrasts with a neighbouring tussar matha paar sari in cream and black border from the collection of Srila Mookherjee.
Right beside it is a cotton zari sari from Nadia in plain weave with continuous supplementary warp and weft of the 20th century from the collection of Weaver’s Studio. A brilliant red-bordered Dhanekhali of 1960 contrasts with a plain weave cotton sari worn by Santhal women from Palchoudhuri’s collection.
Darshan Shah, project director and founder of Weavers Studio Research Centre (WSRC), said: “For nearly three decades, our textile study centre has preserved Bengal’s textile legacy. This exhibit reignites the dialogue around these traditions and their future in academic and commercial spheres.”
A white black bordered sari with peacock and boat motifs, a currency note border are some of the other exhibits.
In the cotton jamdani section is a sari with embroidered jamdani motifs. The sari is from Tapi Collection of Alok and Depika Shah.
On display in the classic jamdani section is a women’s jacket in white cotton with applique chikankari. Right beside it is a man’s angarakha that carries the emblem of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah as a motif. A waist sash, a pichvai (the backdrop for shrine), men’s pajamas, children’s caps are part of the show.
A lesser-known aspect of Bengal’s textiles is its silk embroideries, employing threadwork in tussar, muga and mulberry. While one such genre is the Indo-Portugese trade cloths commissioned for export to Portugal from the 17th century onwards, the other is that of fabrics exported to Indonesia and further to the Arab world called Haji rumals worn as a headdress by men, said Mayank.