Ahmedabad part 1 - Calico, Bhandej, NID

I've realised I haven't yet talked much about Ahmedabad, so I will re-live my experiences there.

I was staying with the MMU students for the five days I was there, which was nice as the university paid the accommodation and we just had to contribute to the transport and food. I spent some of the time taking visits on my own and joined the group for some of their trips, depending on what was relevant for my research or what I fancied for the enjoyment!

I spent a day studying at the Calico museum, a well established and known museum set in beautiful buildings surrounded by peaceful gardens. It was as usual a palava trying to get permission to spend time in the galleries on my own (the gallery is only open to the public for an organised tour 10.30 - 12.30 daily). I was lucky because the great Anne Morrell who has been kindly helping me with my research being an expert in India and textiles and works as consultant for the calico, arranged a visit for me. It took some time to get this clarified but it happened in the end. It was so nice to spend time looking and reading in the galleries without being rushed along by the impatient tour guide!

Another day with the group we visited Bhandej - a high end group of stores producing clothes and luxury goods incorporating high quality craft skills from around India. We visited the shop and then the factory to see and learn the production process. They mainly produce for their Indian shops and only a small percentage of their sales is for export. The factory was similar to the Anokhi factory but on a smaller scale - light, airy spaces, nice conditions for the workers.

A display in the Bhandej shop and all of us sat with the embroiderers who were as interested in us as we were of them!

Another day I took a visit to the prestigious institute NID (National Institute of Design ). I had been the last time I was here and shown around by Nidhi whom I had met while on placement at Kala Raksha. At that time she was also doing a placement there which all NID students do. They get sponsered by a company or designer and do a 2 - 4 month project/placement with them. Nidhi was working with some suf* embroiderers in Sumrasar - the village where Kala Raksha is situated, and producing some embroidery designs for a high end fashion designer in Delhi. I was excited to see her profile and some pictures of her final collection in the 2009 graduates book. They publish a book of all graduates' work every year. I thought this a really nice idea. I might suggest it to MMU although its probably too much money, work etc!

I was delighted to meet Aditi Ranjan, a long standing member of the textiles faculty and co-editor of a beautiful newly published book ' The Crafts of India', a huge encyclopedia illustrating and describing the vast variety of crafts in every state of India. She is a very warm and friendly lady and gave her time to answer my questions on her work. Her husband and co-editor keeps a blog -http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/. He also works on the faculty at NID (where they met I think), and is a specialist in bamboo.

I also got the chance to meet the famous Errol Pires who I had heard so much about from Anne Morrell. I know why now too. He invited me into his office where I was overwhelmed with the array of amazing and exciting display of colourful objects. I sat down and he told me his story of learning and experimenting with the art of ply split braiding - a technique similar to plaiting but instead of simply plaiting, the fibres of each chord are split to make the structure stronger. He learnt the technique from a camel herder in the desert near Jaiselmer who uses the technique to make camel belts. On the left is a picture of a traditional camel belt. are now rarely made because of the length of time it takes to make them and so replaced by cheap alternatives.

Errol experiments with all sorts of variation using this technique and has created quirky objects, structural art pieces, object holders, bags and even garments.

What is even more inspiring is that he doesn't wish to sell his work and would prefer to hold it all in a collection to be used for exhibitions and for people to see and learn from and know where they all came from.

In the evenings we spent a lot of time at the Law gardens market, shopping for 'Kutchi' textiles. Some seemed genuine, most just cheap rip offs but we all found a good selection of useless things and had a lot of fun haggling!

Other nights we just spent chilling out, drawing or writing on our hotel balcony, sometimes smoking bidis (cheap tobacco hand rolled in a leaf and no filter) to wind down after a crazy, busy day (its not socially acceptable for women to smoke so has to be done in our own private space!)