Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Taking a sip at the fountain of inspiration

N. KALYANI

Rosemary Crill, senior curator at London's Victoria & Albert Museum, on the arts that pull her back to India frequently.

"It is Indian paintings — Rajput, Pahari and South Indian — and textiles that have appealed to me the most," says Rosemary Crill, senior curator of the Asian Department at the famed Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Her interest, she reveals, was fuelled when she was at the University of London, pursuing a Bachelor's programme in the School of Oriental and African Studies.

"My work as a curator centres on the dissemination of the knowledge pertaining to the richness of Indian culture," says Rosemary, who was in New Delhi the other day. Displaying the collection of Indian artworks and textiles from across the region, dating, for the most part, to between the 17th and 19th Century, is one part of the process. "Some of the pieces, though, date as far back as the 12th Century, as for instance the Bengali palm leaf manuscripts," informs the lady who joined the museum in 1980.

Rosemary, who specialises in Indian paintings and textiles says, "The V&A museum is unique in that along with the rich and grandiose items that are generally possessed by museums, it also has the textiles of 19th Century India that formed the routine clothing of the ordinary folk. So there are the elaborate gold woven Banarasi saris as also the thick fabric used by the common man."

What is the history of the Indian section? Rosemary points out that in the early 19th Century the East India Company set up the India Museum devoted entirely to articles from India. "It was combined later with the museum subsequently renamed Victoria & Albert Museum. Today it is only one per cent of the entire Indian collection that is therefore feasible to put up on display at any point of time," she explains.

Extensive research work, for which purpose the entire collection is available, is carried on at the museum. It is an area Rosemary has been deeply involved in.

The 53-year-old curator has authored and edited several books and published a large number of academic papers. On her recent trip to Delhi she presented a lecture organised by the Craft Revival Trust on Indian textiles in Europe from the 17th to the 19th centuries.

Lectures, short-term courses and scholarship programmes for international curators are also conducted at the V&A Museum. "It is Britons of Asian origin who mostly evince interest in these programmes," says the soft-spoken, salwar-kameez-clad Rosemary.

"How can I deliver lectures about Indian art and culture in London unless I have a deep and first-hand knowledge of it!" asks Rosemary. Consequently she visits India twice a year.

Her book, "Marwar Painting: A History of the Jodhpur Style", was the result of her 6-month stay in Jodhpur studying Rajput paintings. Her research work in Indian textiles has likewise seen her visiting, over the years, the centres of traditional fabric weaving, dyeing and printing styles in several states in the country, including Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Orissa. Her book, "Indian Ikat textiles", is based on her extensive research on the Ikat resist dyeing technique. What is Ikat? "It is a traditional weaving process that employs a method akin to the tie and dye technique. The fabric's widespread availability is almost over in India now; it is restricted to some pockets in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat where it is still being practised," explains Rosemary, with a tinge of regret.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail