enjoy the journey…
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Guaranteed to bleed: the checked cloth from a fishing village
By Isla Quinn Red into blue into green. Wash it and the colours run into each other. That was the point, by the end. Start in the village The BBC traces Madras check to the fishing village of Madrasapattinam, later Madras and now Chennai. Local fishermen and farmers, it says, wore a hand-woven muslin in…
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Kantha: what a Bengal household did with a worn-out sari
By Ines Keane Turn a kantha over and the story is in the stitches. Small, even, in a line, never overlapping. The Cooper Hewitt museum calls this the kantha stitch, and says the word covers a craft of reusing worn cotton to make household textiles. It is, in its plainest form, a winter blanket. What…
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Knots per square inch: a plain guide to the Bhadohi carpet belt
By Porter Lang Start with the loom. A hand-knotted carpet from the Bhadohi-Mirzapur region of Uttar Pradesh is made on a vertical wooden loom, according to the makers’ own application for a protected name. Thick cotton and woollen yarn forms the warp, and the pile is tied on knot by knot. A good deal of…
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Agra: three Mughal monuments, one river and a winter that suits them
By Rafe Calder The sources cannot agree on the year the Taj Mahal was started. One says 1631, another 1632. Agra is that kind of place: well documented, heavily visited and still full of small disagreements about dates. Where it sits Agra lies on the right bank of the Yamuna in Uttar Pradesh. Britannica puts…
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Seven seeds, two crops and a bean aged by the wind
By Ines Keane Most coffee is judged on how fresh it is. One Indian coffee is judged on how it was left to age. Monsooned Malabar is spread in open warehouses while the monsoon blows through, and the beans come out larger, paler and gentler. First, how the coffee got there. The seeds The Coffee…
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Tarakasi: how a lump of silver becomes lace
By Porter Lang Start with the kit. A wire-drawing machine. A twisting tool and a needle. Die cuts for circles and tiny dots. A flame small enough to guide through a tube. Brushes, and a polishing tool with a brass tip. Silver filigree from Cuttack, called tarakasi, is a craft you can follow by its…
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Two tags for one sweet: reading the Rasgulla dispute
By Rafe Calder The ledger first. In November 2017 West Bengal was granted a Geographical Indication for “Banglar Rasogolla”. In July 2019 Odisha was granted one for “Odisha Rasagola”. Two spellings, two registrations, both still standing when our sources were written. The argument about who invented the sweet was never decided by either. What the…
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Hyderabad’s Old City: four arches, one long lane of bangles
By Isla Quinn Four minarets. Four arches. Four roads running out from the middle, and one of them lined with bangles. Where it starts Wikipedia says Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah founded Hyderabad in 1591 on the Musi River, partly to escape water shortages at Golconda. The Old City lies on the river’s southern side. A…
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Khadi: a cloth that became a law
By Rafe Calder Khadi is plain cloth. It is also a trademark, a government commission, a political argument and a label you may be required to find on a tag. Few fabrics carry that much paperwork. The cloth Wikipedia defines khadi as a hand-spun and woven natural fibre cloth, mostly cotton but sometimes silk or…
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Athangudi tiles: the gloss comes from the glass, not a glaze
By Porter Lang No kiln. No press. No glaze. An Athangudi tile is a cement tile that is poured, set, soaked and sunned, and its shine is borrowed from the surface it was cast on. If you are thinking of a floor, or just wondering why a Chettinad house looks the way it does, that…
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