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The Qalamkari Textiles of Golconda

Details

Dec 02 2022 to Dec 02 2022 7:30 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

From Konkan to Coromandel – Deccan Heritage, Art and Culture (Autum 2022) The fifth season of webinars co-organized by the Deccan Heritage Foundation, the Centre for Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge, the Bangalore International Centre and the Museum of Art & Photography, presenting the pioneering scholarship of in various cultural fields from both the Northern and Southern Deccan Regions of India. By 1700, the qalamkari textiles from Machilipatnam, the central port of the sultanate of Golconda, had gained renown from Delhi to London. Yet despite the recurrence in local and global archives of the cotton cloths from Machilipatnam, none of the many extant export textiles from this early modern period can be secularly attributed to this site of production. Moreover, because the patrons for qalamkari textiles included a wide range of individuals, from South Asian and British royalty to Japanese merchants and European householders, the styles of the cloths are stunningly diverse, displaying floral, figurative, and geometric ornament that makes it difficult to identify a characteristic repertoire. As such, we have a textual archive and material archive that it has not yet been possible to reunite. Drawing upon sources ranging from popular poetry to royal inventory records, this talk details the search for evidence of artisan lives and modes of textile production; sources of patronage and paths of circulation; and argues for the importance of considering the built and natural environment of coastal Golconda in writing histories of the region’s qalamkari cloths. Image credit (website & poster): Tent hanging (qanat). Coastal southeastern India. Cotton, plain weave, hand painted, mordant and resist dyed, ca. 1645, RISD Museum, Providence, RI, 37.010. In collaboration with the Deccan Heritage Foundation, the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, the Museum of Art & Photography and the Bangalore International Centre.


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