The revival of Indian crafts and textiles took a step ahead with the launch of Vandana Bhandari’s book Jewelled Textiles, Gold and Silver Embellished Cloth Of India. She shares with Arjita Mishra it took her 25 years to complete her book
With the initiative of ‘Make in India’, our top designers are working on reviving most of the indigenous textiles in the country. Right from Manish Malhotra to Rajesh Pratap and from Ritu Kumar to Surekha Jain, everyone has come forward and agreed to be the part of this initiative. These textiles not just only add a royal look to an attire but it is a true treasure which is to be preserved.
This initiative was started by BJP leader Shaina NC to revive the Banarasi craft, which has lost its glory because of the increased use of Chinese yarns in sarees.
Taking a step forward, Vandana Bhandari, a professor in the Fashion and Textiles Department at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi has written a book on the rare and unique textiles and weaves of India titled Jewelled Textile Gold and Silver Embellished Cloth Of India, published by Om Book International. In her book, she has written almost about every textile in India which is related with gold and silver zardozi work.
She shared with us about how she started to work on this book. She said, “The time when I was doing a book on Rajasthan, my plan was to talk only about the gold and silver textiles of Rajasthan but my publishers advised me better and asked me to talk about each and every textile in the country.”
This is Bhandari’s fifth book as she has already penned other books on textiles as well. Her works include — Celebrating Dreams: Weddings in India (1998), Textiles and Crafts of India: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Manipur (1998) and the NIFT Millennium Document titled Evolving Trends in Fashion and Costume, Textiles and Jewellery of India: Traditions in Rajasthan.
Bhandari pointed out that this book has been a long journey for her as she started to work on it 25 years ago. She added, “I started full time on this in 2008. It took me a lot of time because I am a teacher and I have to pay attention towards that, too.”
Telling more about her journey of writing this book, Bhandari said, “I was doing a project on some crafts which were dying and one of them was gold and silver embroidery. So I started my work with that and it just kept expanding more and more.”
On asking her whether this book of her falls under Modi’s Make in India initiative, she explained, “To me the whole Make in India project is about working with the hands and when we talk about textiles, we talk about hands. Though this is a new initiative which has come about a year ago but working with crafts is all about the revival and therefore, you may call this book a part of the initiative. It was mere coincidence.”
For this book, the writer had interviewed a lot of craftsmen and also worked closely with ace designers like Tarun Tahiliani, Sabyasachi Mukherjee and almost every designer who has worked with zardozi. “I also went to museums and spoke to experts who have worked in this craft, have referred numerous books on the subject and have also spoken to scholars in the field,” said Bhandari and added, “I tried to get information from wherever I could find because there is very less information available. So I had to work a lot to get facts.”
While going through her book, one can easily make out that she has spent a great deal of time and has worked really hard to collect each and every detail regarding the textiles. The book presents a rich selection of textiles and dresses ornamented with precious metals such as gold and silver. These textiles have been associated with wealth, supremacy, ceremony and divinity in the subcontinent.
To show their support, veteran designers like Tarun Tahiliani and Ritu Kumar were present at the launch of the book along with laila Tyabji.