BANGALORE, India — Across India, there has always been a rich tradition of embroidery work, from the humble kantha of West Bengal to the opulent zardosi of Uttar Pradesh. In recent years, a new generation of contemporary artists has been experimenting with embroidery as an art form. But it wasn’t until the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020 that many of these artists received a new kind of attention.
Since the pandemic started in India, the needle and thread have become a means of expression and creativity, with beautifully detailed works capturing the lives and worlds of the artist. In a culture that often dismisses embroidery as a ‘hobby’ or as ‘women’s work,’ these artists are creating a niche and even sustaining their livelihood through their art.
Jahnavee Baruah, “Aita’s Ancestral Home” (2022). “Aita’s house in Amplapatti was washed away by the Brahmaputra. She recalls there were two Reetha trees (Soapnut) right behind the community well. It was the youngest child’s duty to collect all the soap nuts, which is what they used as detergent and shampoo. Aita and her cousins would jump across the japona to Makuri Aita’s place to collect fruits from her home,” says Baruah.
Embroidery is a layered form of storytelling for Assamese artist Jahnavee Baruah, who has used the medium to discover her roots. “I grew up in Doodooma, Assam, surrounded by tea plantations and paddy fields for miles. The place had a big impact on my fascination for material. I would come back from school and rush outdoors to forage for material to build something out of. I probably picked it up from my grandmother, who was amazing with her hands. I would watch her as she made paper flowers, embroidered handkerchiefs and tatting laces. But I didn’t discover my love for textiles and embroidery until I went to art school,” notes Jahnavee, whose aunt taught her how to embroider during one of her visits back home.
The ancestral land and its people have become Jahnavee’s source of inspiration, and she enjoys documenting her findings through embroidery. “Embroidery feels like a language that my hands speak. I like to explore myths, folklore, or the knowledge embedded in daily living. I consider the land my teacher, and am leaning to quietly observe. I enjoy the slowness of the process, somehow like an ancestral knowledge passed down.”
Anuradha Bhaumick, “Cherry Pickers” (2020)
Bangalore-based Anuradha Bhaumick also had the knowledge of embroidery passed down to her by her mother at the early age of five, when she had chickenpox. While she immediately got hooked to the medium, it was the idea of repair that stayed with her. “Growing up and living in a household that believed in the beauty of handmade objects and to emancipate anything that might be on its last legs really drew me towards fashion design and more importantly, embroidery. I grew up watching my mother in beautiful kanthasarees. My jackets were made of upcycled panels of sofa fabric. A curtain which got bleached out in the sun, the sofa upholstery which got tattered, plaid checks from my school uniform which I outgrew … my mother found a way to repurpose everything. Nothing ever went in the bin. Everything was repairable and could be turned into gold,” recalls Bhaumick. In 2020, she quit her corporate job to pursue embroidery full-time. “Since then, it has been my world. Or maybe it always has been.”
Renuka, “Vivid Like A Covid Dream” (2020)
For Bangalore-based Renuka Rajiv, aka pithbull, their embroidery practice started off by making T-shirts for themselves and has now become a part of their repertoire. The explorations started with the simplest of stitches — the running stitch — and eventually moved to other techniques like appliqué and chain stitch, along with making the works larger to have more room to play.
Rajiv’s embroidered quilts are raw and evocative, full of bodies and figurative forms, with thread imitating what a pen could do. “Since childhood, I have always loved the materiality of fabric and its associated comrades. Thread is a form of line, and I like to draw. It slows down the line compared to using a pen. I like to work free-hand so that the quality of the line remains immediate. I use thread to keep a workflow going,” they share.
Gunjan Thapar, “Vincent and Amrita” (2020), embroidery in thread
Another artist who experiments with embroidery is Santiniketan-based Gunjan Thapar, whose brand Echoes focuses on miniature embroidered collector items inspired by masterpieces from art history. Her journey started in 2019, while studying textiles alongside art history by embroidering her sketchbooks, stitching personal essays together in the form of illustrated books. “During the lockdown, I started to recreate masterpieces to understand the techniques of the artists who originally made them. It became a very calming process that taught me lots,” shares Gunjan.
As Gunjan started posting her miniature pieces online, people reached out to buy them, and she got a lot of commissions and custom orders. But the orders became too much, and she couldn’t make time for her own personal work. “Now, the plan is to focus on my own ideas. I’m presently working on a series featuring women/queer people, where I sketch and embroider them in moments of leisure and comfort. It offers me a lot of solace.”
Gunjan Thapar, “Comfort (A couple’s portrait)” (2021), embroidery in threadAnuradha Bhaumick, “Sukoon” (2021)Jahnavee Baruah, “Bortukulas on the Ximolu Tree” (2021). “This tree in my neighbor’s home has taught Jahnavee to pay attention — every day, every season, as it quietly transforms and shelters so many,” says Baruah.
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LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
