Pra-kashi: Silk, Gold & Silver from the City of Light (2019)

Story of the Making

Pra-kashi celebrated the 25 years of reinventing and reviving of brocades on the drawloom, by the skilled weavers of ASHA Workshop, under the guidance of Rahul Jain. The exhibition was dedicated to one of the patrons of the workshop, businessman, philanthropist and a promoter of arts, late Padma Sri Mr. Suresh Neotia. Devi Art Foundation in collaboration with the National Museum, presented the exhibition titled Pra-kashi: Silk, Gold and Silver from the City of Light.

Narrative and points of references for these textiles came from older textiles spanning over 4 millennium. For the exhibition, antiquities and miniature paintings from the Collection of National Museum supplemented the textiles from the workshop. During the exhibition there were several walkthroughs that covered the history of the weaves, the workshop and the technicalities of these textiles in an invigorating way.

Highlights

– This exhibition had at its core 47 contemporary textiles woven at the workshop ASHA, in Varanasi. They were the product of a unique contemporary experiment when all similar historic centres of drawloom production worldwide (Mughal India, 1526 – 1857; Safavid Iran, 1501 – 1722; and Ottoman Turkey, 1299 – 1922) had fallen silent.

– This exhibition is supplemented with historic examples from the collection of the National Museum, which help connect extant examples with allied traditions of the past.

 

Acknowledgements:

Lenders to the Exhibition: National Museum (New Delhi), Suresh Neotia and Family Collection (Kolkata), Lekha and Anupam Poddar Collection (New Delhi), Cristina Patnaik (New Delhi), Jamuna PEnterprises Pvt. Ltd. (New Delhi), Helen and Rolf von Bueren (Bangkok), LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA) and Cleveland.

Silkweavers: Jamaluddin Ansari, Kmaluddin Ansari, Samim Ansari, Nasim Ansari, Saddam Ansari, Hasmat Ansari, and Shauqat Ansari.

Patternmakers: Jaffer Ali Naqshband and Mohiuddin Ansari

Workshop Supervisors: Azizul Haque and Anwar Ahmad

General Assistant: Alauddin Ansari

Metal Thread (Zari) Specialist: Shyamsundar Jaiswal

Textile Specialists: Rahul Jain, Vinay Singh and Abhishek Jain

Translations: Vinay Singh and Rajni Sharma

Garment Design: Vivek Narang

National Museum Team.