Nakshi Kantha

[doKhin Haowa]

Spreading the embroidered quilt
She works the livelong night,
As if the quilt her poet were
Of her bereved plight.
Many a joy and many a sorrow
Is written in breast;
The story of Rupa's life is there,
Line by line expressed.

      - Jasim Uddin, from "Nakshi kanthar maath"



The current popularity of kantha across the country, and now abroad too, as a fashion statement has a very humble beginning, like many Bengali crafts...Kantha, in Bengali, literally means a quilt...Bengali women made quilts from old saris, folding them into layers and using itinerant running stitches with threads picked from the sari borders...It is warm as a wrap and soft for babies too...Rural women gave free rein to their imagination in colourful designs or flowers they saw, the pond they went to bathe in, or the conch shell they blew in the evening. From an ordinary stitch it morphed into the beautiful nakshi kantha, a connoisseur’s delight...The popularity of kantha has meant economic independence and empowerment to hundreds of poor Bengali women...

The most famous folk craft form is Nakshi Katha or embroidered quilt...Traditionally, village women used to stich layers of old sari together with folk designs in red blue, yellow and green...These followed a particular form and style...Around these motifs fine white stiching created a ripple effects to bind the separate layers...There is a variety of stiches and design but there is a unity in the traditional arrrangement of a padma lotus in the centre or mandap, a tree of life in each corner, kalkas, mythical figures, animals, birds, geometrical objects, symbols of the sun and moon, the swastika, each representing a part of the village women's cultural conscience and the whole relating story.

The story of Nakshi Kantar Math itself spread out in front of us like a beautiful quilt...One can almost see the fields, the young girls, villagers and the still night.

    

If ever there was a true sorority in the world of ideas, it must have been in the field of quilt making...Women, all over the world, took up the responsibility of providing everybody with the warmth against the cold, harsh winter...True, over time, some men joined into foray, but their numbers were never very significant...Hence, Niaz Zaman, in her book, " The Art of Kantha Embroidery," stated that kantha making is an "women's art".

Bengal kantha making is a little different from other quilting artistry...The material is different, so is the stitching method...From a very long time, Bengal cotton and silk have been known in the world market for its finesse and quality...Bengal "muslin" was an item of export even at Perecles's time...When such beautiful creations were worn and old, Bengal women did not see any reason to throw them away...Beautiful sari borders (the everyday dress of Bengali women)were preserved, the soft dhotis (men's clothes) were placed layer upon layer and stitched encased in sari borders...Thus started the first recycling art of the world...The stitching patterns of Bengal kanthas are simple, but it can be very intricate depending on the inclination of the kantha maker.

    

Bengal kantha makers reflect their traditions in choosing their designs...The Hindu kantha makers would tend to choose from religious motifs, like gods and goddesses, the "alpanas" representing lotus flower, conch shells, various birds and beast like peacock, parrots, elephants, lion, tiger, whereas the Muslim women are usually restricted to geometrical designs and plants and flowers...Within that restriction, they are able to create wonderful artifacts in "jainamaz kantha," "dastarkhan," or "gilaf embroidery."

    

In Bengal, kanthas were originally used as baby's diapers, or wrappers...At present day, due to the high cost of hand crafted materials, kantha making for the baby's diaper is not cost effective at all...However, in the early seventies, there had been a revival in kantha art in both the Bengals...Sreelata Sirkar derived inspiration from Pratima Devi of Santiniketan and started designing kanthas for team work...Thus, she not only revived a dying art, but also made room for a great economic activity for West Bengal women...In Bangladesh, the search for a national identity led to a great kantha revival, where the Muslim women artists broke the earlier taboo of not representing human and animal figures in kantha...Now the Bangladeshi artists design fantastic tapestries, one like "Naksi kanthar math" after the narration of the poet Jasimuddin...Now both the Bengals have perfected the art of kantha making with infusions of new materials, concept in design, and various stitcheries, and it can be safely said that these days, it is as popular as woven designs in saris, dresses and upholsteries.

The earliest mention of Bengal Kantha is found in the book, "Sri Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita" by Krishnadas Kaviraj which was written some five hundred years back...The second earliest reference is in Zaman's book about the famous artist Abanindranath Tagore, who seemed to have encountered a woman in a village in a district of Srihatta of Bangladesh, who recorded her life story in her kantha spanning a period starting from her marriage to old age (Niaz Zaman, The Art of Kantha Embroidery, Dhaka, The University Press and Kaviraj Krisnadas, Sri Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita, Calcutta, Dev Sahitya Kutir).

    

Still in the remote villages of Bangladesh the expectant mothers own their last trimester of the pregnancy by making Nakshikantha for the new-born baby believing that wraping the newborn baby by Nakshikantha heralds fortune to the family and protects the baby from inflicting disease...Like Russian woodendolls Matriushka, one can never find two similar Nakshikanthas in this planet...Sri Chaitanya(1485-1533), the hindu krishna- cult prophet and reformist draped him often with Nakshikantha .

Since the emergence of Bangladesh 1971 has Nakshikantha regained its esthetical values...1990 at the Edinburgh Folk Festival for the Commonwealth Countries drew Nakshikantha the best attention by winning a prestigious prize...Among the priceless art collections of Queen Elisabeth-II, ex- President Bush, Pope Johannes Paulus, Robert MacNamara and late President Mitterand all of them has a common possession that is a piece of Nakshikantha .


The fishes find the deep sea,
The birds the branches of the tree.
The Mother knows her love for her son
By the sharp pain in her heart alone
Many and diverse the colour of the cows,
But white the colour that all milk shows.
Through all the world, a Mother's name-
A Mother's song is found the same.
(Jasim Uddin)

Black is the pupil of my eye,
Black ink with which I write
Black is Birth and death is black
Black is the universal Night.
(Jasim Uddin)

Bibliography

Ahmed,Wakil: Banglar Loka-sanskriti.(Bangla Academy,Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue,Dhaka 1000,Bangladesh.Text:Bangla.)
Jasim Uddin: Nakshi Kanthar Maat(text Bangla), English translation "The Field of Embroidered Quilt " E.M. Milford and Rev.Willium Mcdermott,Dhaka 1964.
Jasim Uddin:La Terra Dalla Coltre Ricamata, Italian translation, translated by P. M. Rigon, Lief, Vicenza, Italy, 1977.
Islam, Shafiqul: Nakshikanta,article published in the Swedish quarterly magazine SYDASIEN, Nr.3.1994, årgång 18. Kramrisch, Stella:The Art of India,London 1965. "Kantha", J.I.S.O.A. Vol VII 1939, scanned text of the article coming soon.
Zaman, Niaz:The Art of Kantha Embroidery, ISBN 984 05 1228 5, University Press Ltd.,Red Crescent Building,114 Motijheel C/A, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh.Text:English.

Source: http://www.loving-bengal.net/womens-culture.html

[mou]

chomotkar ekti post korechen dokhin daa. nokshi katha asole amader desher ekta bisesh oitijjho ja niye gorbo kora jay. ar ei kathar sathe koto sriti joriye ache amader. katha-ta hoyto ekhono nitto din bebohar kora hoy..ontoto amader poribare dekhechi seta. katha jokhon selai kora hoto sobai eshe haat lagato..cholto tar fake kotha. amar vabte valo lage je ami ekhono e deshe esheu kaatha bebohar kori. desh theke ar kichu na ani eita mone kore enechi karon eta chara amar chole na. jodio sadamata tarporo koto sriti jome ache er sathe.

abaro dhonnobad ekti chomotkar post korar jonno

[doKhin Haowa]

..asol donnobad ta pabe loving-bengal.net...

donnobad apnar motamot er jonno

[collected]

[jcruz0918]

I think that the pond they went to bathe in, or the conch shell they blew in the evening so that they meet them.



_________________
Silk Flowers

[doKhin Haowa]

Nakshi Kantha  embroidered quilt said to be indigenous to Bangladesh. The term nakshi kantha, popularly used in Bangladesh, is found even in medieval literature. The name nakshi kantha became particularly popular among literate people after the publicaton of jasimuddin's poem Naksi Kanthar Math (1929). In west bengal, all kanthas, both plain and embroidered, are referred to as kantha. In East Bengal dialects the kantha is also variously referred to as kheta or kentha. In Bihar and parts of West Bengal, the kantha is also known as sujni. Made from old cloth, discarded saris, dhotis, and lungis, kanthas range from utilitarian quilts to exquisitely embroidered heirlooms.

Depending on the thickness required, three to seven saris are layered and quilted with the simple running stitch, which typically produces a rippled effect. Traditionally, thread drawn from coloured sari borders would be used to embroider motifs or border patterns imitative of sari borders. At present, embroidery skeins are used for motifs and border patterns. Yarn used for weaving is also used for kantha embroidery, particularly in the Rajshahi-Chapai Nawabganj area where the quilting is heavy.
   
A typical nakshi kantha

Kanthas serve primarily as bed pallets and as light wraps. Small kanthas are used as swaddling clothes for babies. Depending on their size and use, kanthas range from lep kanthas (winter quilts) and sujni kanthas (spreads and coverlets) to one-foot square rumal (handkerchief) kanthas. Other kantha articles include the asan (a spread for sitting), the bastani or gatri (a wrapper for clothes and other valuables), the arshilata (a wrap for mirrors or toilet articles), the dastarkhan (a spread laid out on the floor for placing food items and plates for dining purposes), the gilaf (an envelope-shaped kantha to cover the quran), and the jainamaz (prayer rug).

Most kanthas are utilitarian, with the running stitch being used to hold the layers of cloth together. A large number of kanthas, however, show ingenious use of the running stitch for working motifs and border patterns. Some 19th-century kanthas, for example, have vivid scenes drawn from contemporary life or myths and legends, all worked with different forms of the running stitch. Manipulations of the simple running stitch create ripples, expanses of colour, pointillistic designs, and textures that appear woven rather than stitched. The running stitch also has two particular forms, called the chatai or pati (mat) stitch and the kaitya (bending) stitch, which are used either for motifs or for border patterns. Occasionally, by varying the length of the stitches taken, the running stitch can replicate woven sari border patterns.

Kanthas exemplify thrift, as pieces of old cloth are put together to make something new. However, old cloth also has a magical purpose, as it is believed to ward off the evil eye. The kantha made of old cloth is thus supposed to keep its user safe from harm. Kantha motifs, many of them common to the alpana, also have a magical purpose and reflect both the desire of the needlewoman for happiness, prosperity, marriage, and fertility as well as wish-fulfillment.

Despite their variety, most kanthas tend to follow a basic pattern, the focal point being a central lotus motif with concentric circles of undulating vines or sari border patterns. In the four corners of the kantha, or in the four corners of the central square, tree-of-life motifs or kalka are embroidered pointing towards the central lotus motif. The empty spaces between the central and corner motifs are filled with motifs drawn from nature and the homestead or with scenes from real life or legends. Apart from floral motifs, recurrent motifs are the curvilinear swastika, kitchen utensils, ornaments, elephants, tigers, horses, peacocks, boats, palanquins, and the rath, the chariot of jagannath. Scenes from Hindu mythology juxtapose secular scenes of dancing, hunting, and boating. The areas left without motifs or scenes are quilted with the rippling kantha stitch. Other types of kanthas include the pad tola kantha, which is embroidered entirely with sari border patterns, and the lohori or lohira kantha, in which thick yarn is used for close pattern darning. In the most intricate of pad tola kanthas, there is no space between the concentric border patterns so that the entire kantha seems a piece of woven cloth.

While most kanthas are the work of illiterate women, many contain proverbs, blessings, and even captions of motifs and scenes in Bangla lettering. Thus, in one kantha, the kantha maker blesses her son-in-law: Sukhe thako (Be happy). Some kanthas are autographed, either with the names of the women who made them or indicating the relationship the kantha maker bore to the person for whom the kantha was intended. A few kanthas are inscribed with the names of the persons for whom they were made. A kantha in the Gurusaday Museum, Thakurpukur, West Bengal, for example, notes that it was made by Manadasundari for her father with her own hands. Another faridpur kantha, which contains scenes of the krishna legend, has the caption Bastraharan (the garment theft) under a scene of nude women sitting on a tree.

While the utilitarian kantha never ceased to be made, political upheavals, the availability of manufactured articles, and changing tastes led to a decline in richly embroidered kanthas in the early decades of the twentieth century. In recent years the interest in ethnic arts and crafts has encouraged a kantha revival in both Bangladesh and West Bengal. [Niaz Zaman]

Bibliography  Gurusaday Dutt, Folk Arts and Crafts of Bengal: The Collected Papers, Seagull, Calcutta, 1990; Whitechapel Art Gallery, Woven Air: The Muslin and Kantha Tradition of Bangladesh, Whitechapel, London, 1988; Niaz Zaman, The Art of Kantha Embroidery, 2nd rev. ed., University Press, Dhaka, 1993.

http://www.banglapedia.org/httpdocs/HT/N_0026.HTM

[Snesh]

Hello
we admire the artisans and their skills for such wonderful creation in Kantha designs.
We would like to support and promote such skilled artisans. Can we possibly buy some
beautiful kantha sarees or other textiles you may have. You may contact me at
snegs@rogers.com.

Thanks
Snesh