Darshan Mekani Shah traces Bengal’s textile memory through shibori and kantha for an upcoming Chennai exhibition

In Chennai, a quiescent speech unfolds betwixt cloth and memory. Textile entrepreneur Darshan Mekani Shah’s upcoming accumulation with Silkworm Boutique brings unneurotic shibori and kantha — 2 techniques shaped by clip and touch. Featuring silhouettes specified arsenic kurtas, kaftans, unfastened jackets, co-ord sets, the postulation has a muted palette of beige, brow, rust, grey, maroon and indigo. For Darshan, founder, Weavers Studio, this accumulation reflects a lifelong belief: that textiles transportation past wrong its fold.

When Darshan speaks astir textiles, she does not talk astir the cloth alone. She talks astir migration, memory, loss, recovery, and joy. For implicit 3 decades, Weavers Studio has worked insistently to physique an ecosystem wherever trade from the past is not conscionable nostalgia, but living, breathing knowledge. 

“I didn’t travel from a inheritance successful textiles,” says Darshan. Her family’s story, similar galore successful Bengal, is 1 rooted successful displacement. “We came to India from Rangoon successful 1948,” she recalls. Her begetter was a nonrecreational successful the jute industry. “Business was ne'er connected my mind.” 

Born and raised successful Kolkata, Darshan aboriginal moved to Mumbai aft marriage, wherever she completed her Law grade and a Management programme. Divorce brought her backmost to Kolkata, wherever she started exploring antithetic fields specified arsenic management, concern oregon academics. “I started doing tiny entrepreneurial projects — organising exhibitions, taking tuitions, doing consultancies.”

Textile travels

It was during these exhibitions that she noticed a gap. “At that time, erstwhile I had started moving with exhibitions, thing was happening successful presumption of textile preservation successful Kolkata,” she says. Drawn instinctively to earthy dyes and encouraged by her friends from NIFT successful Ahmedabad, Darshan began moving with textiles connected consignment. 

“ If I had leftover dupattas from enactment I would blockprint them from a tiny store connected Park Street. Or I would spell to Santiniketan and bash kantha embroidery connected fabrics.” What started arsenic a 200 quadrate feet abstraction aboriginal grew into Weavers Studio, guided by her motto — to usage arsenic galore hands arsenic possible. 

With curiosity successful mind, Darshan travelled crossed the world, learning from the large masters successful the textile world. From Toofan Rafai, Sheela Balaji, and KV Chandramouli successful India, to Ruby Ghaznavi successful Bangladesh and Professor Hiroyuki Shindo successful Japan, Darshan immersed herself successful artifact printing, embroidery, indigo, shibori, and earthy dyes. “It helped maine physique my consciousness and sensibilities,” says Darshan, who besides educated herself done books, objects, and travels. “Whenever I travelled, I kept collecting fragments, swatches and samples.” That instinct led her to physique an archive of implicit 1,500 textiles and a room of 3,500 books — each of which tin beryllium recovered successful Weavers Studio Resource Centre, founded by her successful 2007 arsenic an hold to her retail marque Weavers Studio Kolkata. 

A profoundly idiosyncratic turning constituent came erstwhile her girl was getting married. “I realised Bengal doesn’t person a wedding sari,” says Darshan. “People wore Benarasis. Elders wore jamdanis. But wherever was our wedding textile?”

That question led her to Baluchari — Bengal’s communicative silk, primitively woven with Malda silk successful the Murshidabad territory of West Bengal. “We went backmost to the roots,” she says, “The silk, the iconography, the technique.” Her probe expanded Baluchari beyond the mythological scenes from the Mahabharata, Ramayana, Shakuntala. She showcased assemblage epoch Baluchari motives — trains, carriages, peacocks, and hookah, each documented done exhibitions and publications specified as Baluchari: Bengal and Beyond. 

Post-2015, Darshan’s enactment progressively shifted towards research, documentation, oral histories and not-for-profit initiatives. That assistance culminated successful Textiles from Bengal: A Shared Legacy, Darshan’s landmark accumulation past twelvemonth successful Kolkata, which mapped textile traditions crossed undivided Bengal. The accumulation stemmed from the elemental question, “Once upon a clip Bengal clothed the world, truthful what truly happened?,” she says.

For her upcoming exhibition, she draws inspiration from her earlier learnings successful Japan and her engagement with Bengal’s embroidery traditions. “I learned shibori archetypal successful Japan, and it continues to animate me,” says Darshan. The grounds ranges from accepted kantha to experimental interpretations done batik, artifact people and shibori. “In Bengal, 90% of manus embroidery is kantha — it’s societal and fits into women’s lives,” Darshan explains. 

As manner accelerates and crafts are astatine hazard of dying, Darshan’s enactment reminds america that cognition survives lone erstwhile it is practised, shared and re-imagined. 

The Silkworm Boutique accumulation successful collaboration with Weavers Studio volition beryllium from February 6 to 8 astatine Silkworm Boutique, Nungambakkam, Chennai.