The second day of the design seminar at The K. R. Cama Oriental Institute focused on institutions, individuals and vernacular initiatives
Farrokh Jijina
Tenth class student and hereditary weaver Parsotam Vankar of Bhujodi village in Kutch had a dream of starting his own weaving studio to keep his grandfather’s legacy alive. This led him to study design at Judy Frater’s Kala Raksha Vidhyalaya. A second course in business management for artisans in 2016 at the Somaiya Kala Vidya (SKV), founded by Frater helped him to develop and market a new, sophisticated collection of woven fabrics. He now speaks at conferences and delivers motivational talks to young audiences about his formal learning experiences. Frater described Vankar’s journey in a talk on "Design education for artisans: A means to strengthen regional identity” on the second day (January 6, 2019) of The K. R. Cama Oriental Institute’s (KRCOI) 2019 seminar on "Design, culture and history: The idea of objects in modern and contemporary India.” The first day of the seminar was covered in "Motif matters - I” Parsiana, February 7, 2019.
Above left: craftsman at work; Nelly Sethna’s macramé
Clockwise from top (l): a home in a "peri-urban" area; M. F. Husain’s designs for a child’s room;
patterns in a rural setting; photographs from a Godrej typewriter manufacturing plant; house with multiple motifs
Poster design: "Tea is Swadeshi" Photos from seminar brochure and presentations
Vankar is one of 185 alumni of the business management course for artisans which teaches them to value traditional textiles as cultural heritage, explained Frater who has been working with Kutchi artisans for 28 years. The courses developed by Frater, erstwhile curator of the Textile Museum in Washington DC, are the first ever created for artisans, said session chair Radhi Parekh. Frater had to battle with the myth that "traditional is bad, modern is good,” while setting up her Vidhyalaya in 2005. In 2014 she joined hands with the K. J. Somaiya Gujarat Trust to set up SKV.
Dressed in a grey sari worn Gujarati style, Frater told the audience that the garment’s design was the outcome of an outreach program of SKV, where the alumni interacted with artisans in Kumaon in north India, resulting in an unusual pine-cone pattern not previously seen in a Gujarati weave. Alumni have displayed their wares alongside fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee and have interacted with chikan embroiderers in Lucknow, to share their knowledge of Kutchi designs, she proudly noted. "Craft is not only rural…every city needs craftsmen to grow and flourish,” summed up Parekh, founder of Artisans’, an organization that supports long term revival of the crafts.
"What do construction laborers contribute to architecture?” queried Dr Gauri Bharat, associate professor at CEPT (formerly Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology) University in Ahmedabad. Bharat said that carpenters, masons, plasterers and "other unlikely guardians of the design galaxy” were vital in architecture where "flow of ideas is not entirely uni-directional.” Architecture "moved back and forth” between various skill sets. Bharat demonstrated the décor of a house in Ranasan, "in the middle of nowhere,” a three hour drive from Ahmedabad. The façade was embellished with angels in saris, European-looking tiles, a replica of the goddess of learning Saraswati, and elephants. "The client may have given only broad oral specifications… no visualization (drawings or designs) would have been used” while executing what the owner had in mind, she stated. The associate professor suggested that inputs of local networks of laborers in the early 20th century though "varied considerably in terms of aesthetic quality,” served to popularize Art Deco as a building style. "Chinta na karo (Do not worry)” is often the standard response to any request for new work, even in an unknown field, Bharat said of craftsmen. A good craftsman can replicate designs through trial and error, and sometimes even adapt designs to a new environment, she elaborated.
Craftsmen should be seen as creative agents, stated Parekh. "Where the architect’s jobs end and the artisan’s starts is not clear…One cannot think in terms of mutually exclusive territories,” she opined. Some architects, however, are "offended by the idea” that construction workers are co-creators of their works, Parekh noted.
Academic advisor to the seminar, Dr Kaiwan Mehta’s session "Indianness —the quest, the discovery, the continuing puzzle” detailed two key architectural exhibitions, Vistara and Architecture in India, developed by "cultural empressario” Pupul Jayakar as part of the Festival of India in the 1980s. Both exhibitions were "full of symbols from vernacular and current designs.” The managing editor of Domus India, the art, design, architecture and city studies magazine, stated that a recent exhibition jointly curated by him displayed, among other items, the charkha (spinning wheel) and the lota (vessel) as an example of the relationship between the artisan and the craftsman. This image was used on KRCOI’s seminar brochure. Mehta lauded the role of the Mulk Raj Anand-edited design magazine Marg in "creating a museum within the magazine.”
Top row, from l: Mortimer Chatterjee, Dr Seema Khanwalkar, Ranjit Hoskote, Dr Annapurna Garimella, Judy Frater;
2nd row: Radhi Parekh, Dr Gauri Bharat, Dr Kaiwan Mehta, Prof Rahul Mehrotra, Anirban Chaudhuri;
far right: seminar brochure; above, right: audience
Shaping an identity
Anand’s humanism was "influenced by Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore.” Anand looked at the novel as a designed object, expostulated Dr Seema Khanwalkar, professor at CEPT. The writer of Untouchable and Coolie published in the 1930s used Marg, ("his alter-ego,”) to popularize photography among the "youth languishing in the small towns of India.” Pondered Khanwalkar, "Is humanism a viable concept in a world so dominated by machines?”
Maqbool Fida (M. F.) Hussain’s work was "very satisfactory,” noted a 1949 letter from A. Moizuddin, owner of nursery furniture company Fantasy, about the legendary artist. Moizuddin hoped that the creative professional, who had designed advertisements for his company’s products, would "some day be recognized as a great artist.” Mortimer Chatterjee, founder of art gallery Chatterjee and Lal stated this letter was part of their 2017 show "Lila: play in Indian visual culture.” Hussain, who had designed furniture with Disney themes, expressed a desire to "replace Jack and Jill (figures from nursery rhymes) with images from the (Indian epic) Panchatantra,” said Chatterjee, a transition he successfully made for Fantasy. Speaking on "Notes on the exhibition Impact: design thinking and the visual arts in young India,” Chatterjee stated that he felt like an interloper among the other speakers who were academicians, architects and art historians. Impact’s focus was artworks created soon after Independence. The exhibition showcased works from the archives of the National Institute of Design and from the Weaver’s Service Center, both institutions created by Jayakar. The exhibition included "Sooni Taraporevala’s sensitive portrait of (weaver) Nelly Sethna,” notes the website of Chatterjee’s gallery.
"No single museum or organization can do justice to the scope of modernism in design,” said Dr Annapurna Garimella. The chair of the sessions themed around "institutions and individuals that shaped a nation’s idiom” is an advocate of "collegiality” (individuals with a common purpose). Only then can the vastness of Indian design be studied, she stated.
"She has been consigned to oblivion,” rued poet and art critic Ranjit Hoskote of freedom struggle leader and champion of women’s autonomy Kamladevi Chattopadhyay. The spirit behind the founding of The National School of Drama, Sangeet Natak Akademi, Central Cottage Industries Emporium and the Crafts Council of India, Chattopadhyay believed that critical engagement was vital for stable crafts organizations. The term "romantic rebel” as given to her by some admirers of her work is not apt, as she was a doer: she founded institutions and dedicated herself to institution building, said Hoskote. A believer in an "egalitarian and just society,” Chattopadhyay established the model towns of Chattarpur and Faridabad for experimental farming. These initiatives helped consolidate the cooperative movement in the country, revealed the art critic.
"Allow osmosis”
In the intriguingly titled session "Acupuncture in the peri-urban economy” architect Abin Chaudhuri spoke on fragmented zones in the country that have characteristics of both the urban and the rural. The Calcutta based designer showed how simple designs like large windows, louvers, lightweight material, and easy to assemble material could "allow osmosis between the outdoors and indoors.” Successful acupuncture (crossing the boundary between the urban and the rural) would result in inspiring the common man and raise respect for local skills, said Chaudhuri.
Shifting demography has a fundamental impact on conceptualizing architecture, noted architect and urban planner Prof Rahul Mehrotra in his talk "Architecture in a time of transitions.” With 7,528 census towns in India having a population of over 5,000 and 75% of their population engaged in non-agricultural activities, "300 million of our population are in a state of flux” between rural and urban economies, he stated. Using examples of his work at his design firm RMA Architects, Mehrotra expostulated that "new architectural protocols are required” to address cultural transitions. Transitions in urban design occur over decades, and this is reflected in built areas, but the transitions happen simultaneously, he detailed. The Akshardham temple in Delhi, for instance, was built using Japanese JIT (Just in time) technology, he stated.
In the final session of the seminar, "The pleasures and difficulties of being a designer in India today,” Mehta reminisced "as a teacher, writer and professional” about the 1992 demolition of Babri Masjid. "I could never again read the words ‘dome’ or ‘shikhar (summit of a temple)’ without remembering that fateful day,” said the academic advisor. All those who work in design fields must remember that the dispute was over a piece of architecture, he concluded.