The Fabric of India

Sumptuous exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at the rich tradition of making textiles in India.

This is a beautifully displayed show. The commentaries are really interesting and strike a good balance between describing processes and history and just letting you enjoy the objects. I loved the gentle music which played throughout. The show had interesting themes looking at the different techniques, dying, weaving and embroidery, then with a section on royal fabrics and finally looking at the resurgence in the Indian textile industry from Ghandi onwards.

My main impression of the show was of a wonderful sense of colour and texture. I loved the section on the different dyes showing the raw material of the dye then fabrics which had used it. I really wanted the wonderfully plain indigo dress from 1850.

The section on royal fabrics was great. You were lead into it down a corridor of red threads and the room itself was bathed in blue light. I loved the sultan’s tent from 1725 which had been set up in one corner. I loved the use of floral designs to give a sense of an indoor garden.

There was a fascinating section on the politics of khadi cloth in the 20th century when foreign imports of cheap fabric had threatened the industry and it became a symbol of the liberation movement with the flag having a spinning wheel in the middle of it. I’d never realised and thought it was a flower!

I would just have liked to see a section early on to explain how the textiles were used in clothes. There were lots of pieces of cloth but very little clothing. Maybe just a small area with an overview of the different traditional regional clothes so you got an idea of how the fabric worked and was designed to drape.

Closes on 10 January 2016.

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