Dagger with Nilgai (Blue Bull) Hilt, from the Shahjahani era

This beautiful dagger is dated from 1640, during the reign of Mughal emperor Shahjahan. Shahjahan's rule, based out of Agra and Delhi, lasted for 30 years. It was a period of great cultural and artistic flowering. Some of India's most beautiful monuments belong to this period; but Shahjahan also patronised the arts and crafts. This beautiful nephrite and steel dagger reflects not only the Mughal appreciation of craftsmanship, but also of the natural world. See how wonderfully the grey-green nephrite showcases the delicate ears of the Nilgai!

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/453253

The dagger is currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The description on the museum website says "Daggers such as this one were sometimes awarded to officers who had distinguished themselves in military victory and were worn at court as dress accessories indicating royal favor. Animal-headed hilts were especially favored, and the realism of their rendering conveys the keen appreciation for nature by Mughal artists.

On this dagger, the hilt portrays a nilgai, or blue bull, one of the most beautiful animals found in India, and terminates at the base with a leafy scroll and lotus flower. Carved from a bluish-green nephrite that approximates the color of the animal, this hilt not only demonstrates the artist's thorough mastery of hard-stone carving, but also displays a level of accuracy and sensitivity that suggest close observation of a model, perhaps one of the captive animals kept in the imperial zoo."

The dagger found its way into the personal collection of Nasli Heeramaneck, a Parsi dealer of antiquities and art objects, who died in 1985. His personal collections were bequeathed to various museums. Around 200 objects from Heeramaneck's Pre-Columbian and Western Art collection was gifted to the National Museum in Delhi, where you can see it displayed even today. 

Textile tour in Delhi

Last month we had a very interesting textile workshop in Delhi, for a group of visitors from the USA. We visited the home of one of my friends, who is a textile designer. 

The tour began with an audio-visual presentation, an introduction to Indian textiles. We explained many different types of weaves, embroideries and printing traditions to the guests. They also tried their hand at draping a saree. A lovely evening, great conversation, and delightful snacks. Here are a couple more photos from the tour. I'm looking forward to more of these tours in future!

My Kotpad saree from Dastkar Nature Bazaar

There are only 8 families in the world practicing the traditional tribal craft of Kotpad weaving. I was delighted to meet Jema and Gobardhan Panika from Kotpad village, Koraput, Odisha at Dastkar Nature Bazaar. They are both National Award winners for their weaves.

The red colour comes from the roots of the aal tree (Indian Madder). Shades of red, maroon and dark brown can be obtained depending on the ageing of the madder and the way the dye is processed (under the sun, in clay pots). Black is developed by adding powdered kumhar-pathar (sulphate of iron; they buy it from blacksmiths).

This white-red-black saree will be one of my most treasured buys. 

Kotpad weave is done using pit looms, which are at floor level, with a sunken pit where there is a foot-operated pedal. Weaving motifs are geometrical, but also drawn from nature - tortoises, crabs, birds and what not. See the photo below; these are dupattas. You can see the popular axe motif at the bottom, making a proud statement of the tribe's roots in the forest. 

Here is another set of stoles:

They can be reached at +91 9938294630 or +91 09938575524.
Sri Gobardhan Panika, National Awardee
Smt. Jema Panika, National Awardee
Mirgan Street, Kotpad - 764058, District Koraput, Odisha, India.

The Bharany Collection - at the National Museum, Delhi

I went to see the Bharany collection on display at the National Museum. The show is called the Passionate Eye, and it represents a small selection from the vast collections of R. K. Bharany, whose son donated this collection to the museum.

Even the loveliest of gems needs a sensitive setting, and I was delighted at the aesthetics of the exhibition. The dark matte background, and the subtle lighting ensured that the objects drew the eye, and you were led through a progression of themed items. 

The Bharany collection is actually very varied; so making sense of it and ensuring that the layout has a natural physical progression without confusing and repeating themes is important. It's like story-telling. Every museum exhibition is a piece of story-telling. 

I was looking around, wondering who the story-tellers were; the magic guys who had highlighted and brought this set of art objects alive. I was lucky to bump into Siddhartha Chatterjee, who designed the exhibition display and the graphics. He was kind enough to explain some parts of the process. I realised, very quickly, the enormous work and thought that has gone into A Passionate Eye. I could only understand a tiny part of the thought process in our ten minutes together, but it was a valuable insight. I would have liked to spend more time, just talking about the project, but you know how it is - the day has just so many hours, and I had multiple meetings lined up. 

In the photo above you can see one of the many highlights of the exhibition; a Rajasthani pichwai, with a Vishnu bronze from Kerala in the foreground. Siddhartha explained to me that in designing this section, they decided to go with a primarily Vaishnavite theme; but also that hidden in one corner were two interesting exceptions :) If you visit the exhibition, see if you can spot them!

A Passionate Eye is on view at the National Museum until 14 August, from 10am -5pm, all days of the week except Mondays.

My new jacket

It is winter now, and Fab India has started to stock several jackets for women. I bought a new blue jacket a couple of days ago, and yesterday I wore it for the first time. I teamed it with an orange linen kurta.

As soon as I wore the jacket, I fell in love with it. Especially the easy laid-back yet formal look! And the pockets, lord, they were super useful!! As the day progressed, my phone, my pen, money, little chits of paper, coins...everything found its way into two spacious pockets.

By evening, I was hooked good and proper.

I was going to become a Jacket-Wearing-Person.

I would be just like my friend Debashish from Ahmedabad, who works in heritage conservation, and wears the kurta-jacket combination often on walks and lectures. This was going to be my new look!

And then came the rub. I discovered that the jacket was Matka Silk.

Matka is the local term for rough hand spun silk fabric. It feels and looks a bit like tweed, except that it is single-colour. It's a soft fabric, so if you provide inner lining cloth, you can make great jackets with it. Often there are rough irregularities in the fabric, which gives it a charm all its own. The best thing about matka, though, is that it always drapes softly and adapts to the contours of the body.

So what's the problem, you ask? The problem is that I've more or less given up buying silk. Especially after I visited the silk making village near Bangalore and saw the moths being boiled to death. Not a pretty sight.

The jacket was a quick impulse buy, I didn't even stop to see what the fabric was. I just assumed it was cotton. But I've bought it now, and I'm a little bit stuck here. Should I give it up? Aaaaagh, No! Maybe I should just gift it to someone. I'm telling you, parting from this jacket is going to be a very difficult thing :-)

Here's a closer look in sunlight, clicked in my car.
You can see the Matka fabric more clearly in this one. 

Finding mulberries (shahtoot) in Delhi

I heard that mulberries were being sold in the city, and so I asked my colleague Gaurav if he had seen any. Thus began Gaurav's hunt for shahtoot :) It took him all over the city, but finally he found this young boy selling mulberries in Old Delhi. 

There was no shortage of buyers. First there was a man in a white shirt.

And then a boy with his father on a scooter.

The sweet lure of shahtoot drew everyone to it. Shahtoot. What an interesting name, shah originating from the Farsi word for emperor, and toot meaning berries. The King's Berries. It is pronounced sheh, not shah, actually. Typically the fruits start to develop in April, and are seen in the markets up to May. 

The mulberry tree is originally from China, but it has grown in India for so long that it has become naturalised.  There are two types of mulberry usually found in Delhi - morus alba (white) and morus australis (darker berries). But the so called "white" mulberry tree produces fruits of all colours, ranging from pale yellow to very dark purple, so it's difficult to tell the two sub-species apart.

This batch of mulberries has all kinds of shades, but they
are all from the same white mulberry tree.

In fact, other variants, like morus nigra (black mulberry) and morus serrata (Himalayan mulberry) are probably here somewhere as well, quietly growing in some part of the city. But the fact that the white mulberry produces such a diverse range of fruit colours means that these other types are hard to identify when you see the fruits in the market.

Mulberry Tree growing in Sarai Kale Khan

Silkworms have been reared on the white mulberry tree in China for silk since antiquity. In Japan also, where silk is made from the mulberry tree, there are over 700 recognised varieties of white mulberry.

In India, the silk that we see in the market is primarily sourced through silkworms reared on mulberry trees. The major mulberry silk producing states are Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Jammu-Kashmir. These states together account for 92 % of country's total mulberry raw silk production. There are about 6 million workers in the silk production process, of which 60% are women.

A couple of years ago, I went to a weaver's house in Kanchipuram, in Tamil Nadu. They were a family of traditional weavers, and like all traditional establishments, it was a cottage industry with everyone in the family involved in the many activities. I saw silk thread (uncoloured) and also the thread coloring and weaving process.

Uncoloured silk thread. This is the raw material
which they purchase from silk suppliers 
(it comes from silkworms bred on mulberry leaves).

The weaver's family dyes the thread, and winds it into wooden spools.
Mostly this activity is done by women, and it is interspersed with
other household work like cooking and cleaning

The thread is placed on the loom as per the design (which is defined 
through a complicated pattern of vertical threads and knots).
It is then woven into cloth. The whole thing is a slow process, 
and the end result is a shining silk saree.

When you see the mulberry tree, it's difficult to imagine that such a beautiful glossy thread can come from it. But the process of rearing silkworms, and getting the silk from it, is far from beautiful.

http://www.designboom.com/history/silk1.html

There's an outstanding step-by-step set of photos here, if you'd like to see it. Very time-consuming, and  labour-intensive. And yes, for those of you who are squeamish, they do boil the cocoons to kill the chrysalis.

Apart from being used for rearing silkworms, the mulberry tree has many other uses. In rural areas, the bark of the tree is used to weave baskets. You can make a cool sherbet for summer. Nirulas in Delhi also sells mulberry jam. In the Unani medicine system, mulberries are popularly used for sore throats, and also as a cure for melancholia. Some scientific studies show that mulberry extract has "has anti–inflammatory, exudative, proliferative and anti-pyretic activities".

Next time you see shahtoot being sold, buy some and try making sherbet from it. Here's my version:

• Buy 200 gms of mulberries, wash and clean it and pat it dry
• Remove stems
• Add approximately same amount of sugar, blitz in your mixer
• Taste and see if it is super-sweet.
• Add juice of 1 lemon or half a lemon, depending on how you want it
• Strain the juice
• Serve with ice, garnished with mint

This is a fresh juice, which you should ideally consume the same day. Enjoy :)