India's textile and clothing worlds are marked by a distinctive model of creative interaction between “designers” and “artisans.” Referencing different skills and social positions, this designer–artisan dyad was relationally configured during India's post-colonial transition in the 1940–50s, imbued with distinctively modernist ambitions of national development. Such imperatives remain prominent in pedagogy at Indian design schools, where novice designers are routinely taught to develop relationships with artisans and position themselves as intermediaries between “village” traditions and world markets. At a moment when fashion industry institutions globally are grappling with colonial legacies, Threads: Sustaining India's Textile Traditions takes up the question of how, and on what terms, Indian fashion designers and textile artisans perceive value in their shared projects.

Five textile scholars present different perspectives on their traveling seminar in India (February/March 2020): Introduction and Research Goals (Barbara Setsu Pickett); Textiles and Architecture - including section on naqsha and logic (Carol Bier): Historical Textiles in Museum Collections (Louise W. Mackie and Anna Jolly); The Indian Drawloom, the Naqsha and Velvet from a Weaver’s Point of View (Barbara Setsu Pickett); Sustainability and Design Influences (Annin Barrett); Reflections on a team approach to field research; Bibliography.

This paper discusses fashion's relationship with traditional craft in India, focusing on the handloom industry in Maheshwar, a small town in Madhya Pradesh state. The organisation Women Weave, founded by Sally Holkar in 2003, has moved away from the silk, cotton and zari (metallic yarn) fabrics and saris that Maheshwar is known for, and is producing its own form of khadi (hand-spun, hand-woven yarn), popular in high-end Indian and global fashion. A recent initiative of Women Weave is The Handloom School (THS), which teaches weavers from different parts of India business, design IT and communication skills with a view to enabling them to connect directly with a high-end luxury market. The school is in its early stages and the curriculum is continuously being revised and adapted. My recent ethnographic fieldwork in Maheshwar and other weaving regions in India has involved learning about the experiences of some of the students and graduates of THS over the past three years. This paper will draw upon these experiences, while presenting some of the challenges the school is facing amidst a broad and lively debate on craft in India within the development, anthropological, design history and material culture discourses.

Abstract Handloom weaving in India is a vibrant and dynamic craft-based technology that is more than two thousand years old. It is the second-largest provider of rural livelihoods, with a 10 percent share of the domestic textile market, unified under the cultural brand of “handloom.” Yet weavers, like other craftspeople in India, stand in the shadow of deep divisions: rich/poor, urban/rural, modern/traditional, Brahmin/Dalit, educated scientist/illiterate laborer. As a system of knowledge, handloom weaving is associated with a museumized past rather than a promising future; the weaver is seen as a laboring body rather than an innovative mind. Yet through theorizing handloom weaving as sociotechnology, this essay endeavors to explicate the sustainability and innovation in handloom weaving. Studying examples of innovation in handloom weavers, the essay explores craft livelihoods as offering the opportunity for political action: as a unifying device for cultural cohesion, as embodied knowledge that engages both mind and body, and as a tool for justice and equity.

All through the ages, all the world over, we find vivid examples of man's strong urge to express his creative and aesthetic instincts in visual form. As his home was the centre of his activities, and his way of life and thoughts sprang from within this protective shelter, man from earliest times appears to have begun at first to paint and draw simple pictures on the inside and outside walls of his dwelling to satisfy his inner creative artistic impulse--the love of the beautiful. The early instinct for decoration therefore seems closely bound up with structure-the abode of the human creature whatever mode or shape it took. Archaeological finds of great historical, artistic, and sociological interest have revealed drawings and designs of animals and birds on the walls of early primitive homes.

This paper specifies propositions to explain the occurrence of Anthropology of Arts specifically Sambalpuri Ikat Textile in Odisha. It focuses one specific category of antecedents-Sambalpuri Ikat textile-Technique, Motifs and Designs and method of production of Ikat in Odisha. It covers five broad aspects work-related to Sambalpuri Ikat Textile in Odisha. These are History of Ikat Technique in Odisha , Specific Motifs and designs, weavers and their Background, Ikat Technique used for weaving Sambalpuri Fabrics, Uniqueness of Sambalpuri Fabrics. It specifies an integrated model that provides a comprehensive representation of Sambalpuri Ikat Textile in Odisha.