AMBER, India — Textiles designer Brigitte Singh lovingly lays
out a piece of cloth embossed with a red poppy plant she says was probably
designed for emperor Shah Jahan, builder of the
Taj Mahal, four centuries ago.
اضافة اعلان
For Singh — who
moved from France to India 42 years ago and married into a maharaja’s family —
this exquisite piece remains the ever-inspiring heart of her studio’s mission.
The 67-year-old
is striving to keep alive the art of block printing, which flourished in the
16th and 17th centuries under the conquering but sophisticated Mughal dynasty
that then ruled India.
“I was the first
to give a renaissance to this kind of Mughal design,” Singh told AFP in her
traditional printing workshop in Rajasthan.
Having studied
decorative arts in
Paris, Singh arrived aged 25 in 1980 in western India’s
Jaipur, the “last bastion” of the technique of using carved blocks of wood to
print patterns on material.
“I dreamed of
practicing (miniature art) in Isfahan. But the Ayatollahs had just arrived in
Iran (in the Islamic revolution of 1979). Or Herat, but the Soviets had just
arrived in Afghanistan,” she remembers.
“So by default,
I ended up in Jaipur,” she said.
‘Magic potion’
A few months after arriving, Singh was introduced to a member of the
local nobility who was related to the maharaja of Rajasthan. They married in
1982.
At first, Singh
still hoped to try her hand at miniature painting.
But after
scouring the city for traditional paper to work on, she came across workshops using
block printing.
“I fell into the
magic potion and could never go back,” she told AFP.
She started by
making just a few scarves, and when she passed through London two years later,
gave them as presents to friends who were connoisseurs of Indian textiles.
Bowled over,
they persuaded her to show them to
Colefax and Fowler, the storied British
interior decorations firm.
“The next thing
I knew, I was on my way back to India with an order for printed textiles,” she
said.
Since then, she
has never looked back.
Soul comfort
For the next two decades, she worked with a “family of printers” in the
city before building her own studio in nearby Amber — a stone’s throw from
Jaipur’s famous fort.
It was her
father-in-law, a major collector of Rajasthan miniatures, who gave her the
Mughal-era poppy cloth connected to Shah Jahan.
Her reproduction
of that print was a huge success the world over, proving especially popular
with Indian, British, and Japanese clients.
In 2014, she
made a Mughal poppy print quilted coat, called an Atamsukh — meaning “comfort
of the soul” — that was later acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in
London.
Another piece of
her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York.
‘Sophistication of
simplicity’
Singh starts her creative process by handing precise paintings to her
sculptor, Rajesh Kumar, who then painstakingly chisels the designs onto blocks
of wood.
“We need a
remarkable sculptor, with a very serious eye,” she said.
“The carving of
the wood blocks is the key. This tool has the sophistication of simplicity.”
Kumar makes
several identical blocks for each color used in each printed fabric.
“The poppy
motif, for example, has five colors. I had to make five blocks,” he said. “It
took me 20 days.” At Singh’s workshop, six employees work on pieces of cloth
laid out on tables 5m long.
They dip the
blocks in dye, place them carefully on the cloth, push down and tap. The work
is slow and intricate, producing no more than 40m of material every day.
Her workshop
makes everything from quilts to curtains and rag dolls to shoes.
Singh just
finished another Atamsukh for a prince in Kuwait. “The important thing is to
keep the know-how alive,” she said.
“More precious than the
product, the real treasure is the savoir faire.”
Read more Fashion
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
