IC:Innovative Craft Blog

Thinking of India…

Posted Thursday 11 February 2010, 03:22pm

Remembering India is constant at the moment.  For those who haven’t already had 4 hours of holiday snaps and excited chat, I was lucky enough to spend 3 weeks traveling in Delhi and Rajasthan over Xmas, New Year, which I found inspiring, unsettling and wonderful in turn. Craft followed me everywhere – the intricate saddles of the camels we were riding in the Thar desert reminded me of the wonderful Peter Collingwood book, ‘The Maker’s Hand, A Close Look at Textile Structures’ (ISBN 1-85725-134-2).  A fascinating market celebrating hand-weaving in the centre of Mehrengarh Fort in Jodphur linked me straight back to Dovecot Studios – although Douglas and his team haven’t yet dug a sandpit to sit in to weave!  The carved stone screens in the magnificent Rajput palaces cast mesmerising patterns of light and colour across stone floors (as some 40 images show!)– which reminded me of Jo Barker’s brilliantly coloured tapestries inspired by Cairo which were on show in Follow A Thread.  I had a go at Hand Block Printing in the Anokhi Museum; got seduced by the different cutting techniques of sapphires and rubies in the shops of Muslim stone cutters in Jaipur.  Even wandering round a remote Jain temple site in Ossian, I found a craft familiar.  The British jeweller Ruth Tomlinson (whose current work is on show courtesy of Bishopsland at Dovecot) hailed me from behind a carved stone elephant.  She was traveling with the furniture designer Gareth Neal and (once we had overcome the confusion of strange meetings) they asked me whether I was traveling for work.  I stressed that this was strictly holiday, but on reflection I suppose the answer is not that simple…………

Amanda