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JAPAN: Antique and vintage Indian textiles

TOKYO: Hiroko Iwatate began collecting antique and vintage Indian textiles 37 years ago. Not pieces created as art, but ordinary items — clothing, rugs, quilts, curtains — utilizing skills, techniques and designs passed down by generations of women over the centuries.

Nor did it matter if items were worn and frayed. Iwatate simply brought them home to pick out the debris (and dead insects), then repair as best she could.

Wear and tear is a part of their intrinsic beauty, she considers.

Her collection is on display at "Textiles: The Soul of India," which will run until Dec. 20. Next year it will go to Osaka. Also Toyoda, and "hopefully" Hiroshima. The current show coincides with the publication by Kyuryudo of a book of the same name — a gift itself.

The first textiles purchased by Iwatate, turban scarves that attracted her "because they looked like lengths of tie-dye shibori" and also late-19th-century camel girths and harnesses "because the designs were so contemporary."

Born in Tokyo, Iwatate studied weaving (and printing) under the tutelage of Yoshitaka Tanagi, a relative of the founder of the Mingeikan, Muneyoshi (Soetsu) Yanagi.

After graduating, she traveled to Peru. After Peru, she decided to take a look at Asia. China was too close to home. By comparison, India seemed wonderfully exotic. But when she got there, she found museums interested only in classicism, not the art of the commonplace.

After two months traveling all over India, she returned with 10 items, but could not stop thinking about what she had seen and left behind. Six months later, she returned, to buy wherever she could, initially from people off the street, from women in their homes, and eventually from dealers and other collectors.

Detail of a kantha, or quilt. Kanthas are made as part of a daughter's dowry, as a travel rug or a grandchild's blanket. Into them are woven the maker's emotions, dreams, memories, frustrations and love. 

Iwatate's collection of ethnic Indian textiles, the oldest dating back to the 18th century, now numbers 4,000. She keeps them in tin-lined tea boxes, "because they're cheap and combat humidity," all stored in an air-conditioned room in the building she and her husband, American George Burrill, own in Jiyugaoka.

A quilt cover from the Kutch area was a fairly recent acquisition and, unusually, on a synthetic base and newly made. Traditionally, fabrics were natural — cotton, wool, silk — and colored with natural dyes.

The mirrors that are so commonly associated with Indian textiles were originally made from mica. Now they are cut into shapes from sheet mirror. They were functional, as well as decorative. Traditionally people had only small lamps at night, so mirrored hangings reflected light back into the room or tent. The mirrors were also believed to keep bad spirits as well as wild animals at bay.

Iwatate's most recent purchases were two curtains printed with indigo and madder, weighted with leather to keep them hanging flat. Fine muslin veils and cashmere scarves. Woven wool plaids. Quilted (indigo) jackets. Incredible wedding clothes. And kanthas.

Source: Agencies • News Courtesy: BharatTextile.com