xiii. The Feminine Fabric?
As we reach the end of our patchwork quilt, note this, reader: to attempt to summarize kalamkari with the term “feminine fabric” does a disservice to the hundreds of artisans who have contributed to the evolution of the art form over thousands of years. The story I have retold here is a small, subjective reading of a vast, sprawling history.
What can be said is that women from all over the world were responsible for kalamkari’s popularity, in ways that both uplifted and endangered the original artisans. Now, the makers of these incredible cloths are all invisible, washed away by the imposition of Eurocentric texts and Western lenses that have fed scholarly debate for the past decades. Only now are Indian voices re-emerging, taking back the narrative.
So as a tribute to the imaginary women who may have labored over these cloths and inserted their own lives into these fabrics, I want to repeat textile scholar Rahul Jain’s words here:
“These textiles [may have] carried subtle imprints of women’s domestic and communal lives and, in some ways, of their temperaments and personalities. The design of these cloths was expressed in a graphic visual language that often transcended narrow religious, political, and cultural boundaries. The motifs [may have] reflected the rites and beliefs that governed women’s roles as daughters, wives, mothers, and sisters, as well as the symbols and narratives of their religious faith, and the real and imagined worlds they inhabited in their daily life, work, and recreation” (2011, 228).