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T
he women whisper as they embroider their hopes
and dreams into the fabric creating a visual scene
that is at once imaginative and picturesque.
The names
bagh
and
phulkari
, literallymeaning ‘garden’
and ‘flower-work,’ reflect the fertility of Punjab’s plains,
where these embroidery techniques were practised.
An expression of a woman’s creativity, they took
forward a deep-rooted socio-cultural practice that
lay embedded in a feminine legacy. Passed down
from mothers to their daughters, women created
these vivid and pictorial pieces for their homes as a
reflection of their ingenuity.
A single piece often took years to complete. The
embroidery is done on hand-spun, hand-woven,
cotton
khadi
. The fabric was woven on a narrow pit
loom, and therefore lengths were stitched along the
selvedge. The fabric was dyed with madder, giving it a
distinctive deep red or maroon hue. The embroidery
was done with untwisted silk floss. A variety of stitches
were used from chain and stem to herringbone,
buttonhole, blanket, cross, and running. A unique
feature of the embroidery was that the short and long
darning stitches were executed from the reverse side
of the fabric by counting the warp and weft threads.
The longer stitch appeared on the right side of the
fabric while only a single pick was visible on the reverse.
The quality of workmanship and dexterity of the
embroiderer was as much evident by the size of the
stitch as by the evenness and smoothness of the back
of the fabric. The stitches were usually laid in different
directions, thus creating the effect of light and shadow.
These embroidered textiles were presented and
worn at important occasions in a woman’s life: at her
wedding ceremony, during
karva-chauth
(the special
fast she kept for her husband’s protection), on the
festival of Guruparab, and the birth of her children.
They embroidered motifs were reflective of her every-
day life, the events she saw taking place around her,
as well as her desires for a blissful and prosperous
married life. Each piece is unique as each woman
created her own individual style. Stylistic variations in
bagh
and
phulkari
are noted on the basis of the extent
of coverage of the fabric with embroidery, the types
of designs and the distribution of the motifs on the
cloth. In a
phulkari
the motifs are spread out on the
plain fabric and large areas of ground fabric remain
visible, while the motifs on a
bagh
cover the ground
so that it becomes invisible. While the
phulkari
has
different motifs at the centre and the corners, the
bagh
motifs are more uniform.
The decline of
bagh
and
phulkari
began with the onset
of severe droughts in the Punjab region in the 19
th
century. Though some amount of revival took place
in the 20
th
century, later pieces tend to be produced
with machine-made yarn and fabric, and do not have
the same vitality of the old textiles. Jasleen Dhamija
acquired the fine
bagh
and
phulkari
pieces in this
collection in the 1960s though they were made earlier.
BAGH AND PHULKARI
Meh bhul gayi
Meh ous di yad
Wich dub gayi
I have lost myself
I have flowed
Into His being