The Scottish Side...

...of the residency/exchange is something you can catch up on here where Swati has set up a photo blog to record Murji's and her explorations in the Borders and beyond.

Counting Down (ii)

Three weeks today I'll be waking up in Arts Reverie in Ahmedabad.....

Murji with his wonderful woven work

Meanwhile Swati and Murji are here in the Borders exploring mills and workshops (and The Taste of Spice restaurant in Selkirk!). They have met alpacas as well as lots of humans, and displayed their impressive woven scarves and shawls and more at the Textile Towerhouse in Hawick. It's such a treat for us all to be immersed in textile talk, and I have so much more to look forward to!

Counting Down (1)

Just a week till Swati and Murji arrive from Ahmedabad to begin their month in the Borders. Trips to mills and workshops await them, and a little sightseeing too.

So they are arriving to this (hope the weather's kind)

and this (Heriot Watt Campus at Galashiels)

A wee bit of a contrast to Jeni and me, in five weeks' time - heading first to Ahmedabad, 

 

but also to quite a bit of this!

Kala Raksha

I will be rattling on a whole lot more about Kala Raksha in a couple of months' time when I have been and experienced it for myself. At the moment I am in awe of the scope and quality of the work carried out there and feel hugely privileged to be able to be a part of it for a little while. 

There are several strands to the Trust's work, including a well established design school, Kala Raksha Vidhyalaya, retail and trade sales, an incredible museum (online too) documenting work such as these examples here, and workshops for you and me with its graduates in textile crafts including weaving, block printing, batik, bandhani, embroidery, appliqué and patchwork.

I have adapted the following from the Trust's website and borrowed the images from their museum

 

Established as a trust in 1993, and comprising artisans, community members, and experts in the fields of art, design, rural management and museums, Kala Raksha works with nearly 1,000 embroidery artisans of seven ethnic communities.

Kala Raksha is located in Sumrasar Sheikh, 25 km north of Bhuj in Gujarat. Here, the museum, production unit, shop and guest house inhabit structures that adapt traditional architecture to contemporary function. A model for community development, the centre is locally managed and operates with solar power.

Kala Raksha means "Art Preservation." The Trust aims to preserve traditional arts of the region by making them culturally and economically viable. Trust activities are artisan driven. Without artisans there can be no traditional arts. Kala Raksha encourages community members to work together toward the goal of self sufficiency. Generating income through their traditions, community members can realize their strengths and maintain their identity as they develop.

An ancient skill - a new experience!

Mata ni pachedi is a method of painting on fabric which developed several hundred years ago. The original paintings followed a set pattern in red and black, depicting the Mother Goddess (Mata) in various forms.

In Ahmedabad a handful of families still carry on the traditions. Cotton fabric is first de-starched and then treated with harada paste, to prepare it for absorbing the colour. The outlines of the figures are painted first, with a black colour prepared from jaggery and iron. Then, using a dye extracted from tamarind seeds, the red areas are filled in. 

After the application of each colour, the fabric is boiled in alizarin solution, to bring out the colour, and then washed. The original designs have now transformed to more artistic illustrations but the style of depicting mythical characters remains the same. Artists now incorporate many more colours but they are still extracted from natural materials.

Sanjay Manubhai Chitara and his brother Vasant Manubhai Chitara are two award winning Mata ni Pachedi artisans in Ahmedabad. On 26th September all four of us (Jeni, Swati, Murji and I) are attending a workshop with one or other of these talented brothers to try the technique for ourselves!
 

Paperwork and Pills

Major steps forward - got my visa with the magic word multiple so I get to go back again next February too. And quite a lot of malaria tablets...gulp.
Things are hotting up - workshops and trips being planned, both here for Swati and Murji, and in Ahmedabad for us all. All sorts of wonderful textile treats and experiences lie in store for us.

Paperwork and needles

There have been lots of wee steps forward towards the great day when we fly out to Gujarat - today's have been my first jab and getting to grips with the online visa application which has been a bundle of bureaucratic fun, I can tell you. Just how often can one form need to ask you to verify which country you live and breathe in? And now I think my passport-type pics are the wrong size - sigh!