| I worked with the master weaver, Rajon Miah, whose skills are extraordinary and though my ideas were challenging, his masterful skills saved the day. The two motifs I created are pictured below - the tulip with indigo, and the tiger stripes. I call them symbols of power and below is a transcript of my audio :
Symbols of Power is a collaborative journey, my journey with the jamdani weaver, exploring the nature of motifs that may change just like the ‘dhara’ or flow of time. So I remind myself of the quote from my teacher – tradition is new ways of doing old things and this statement can be instrumental in allowing change so that tradition can thrive and not just survive. How can this approach help both myself and my fellow artisan, Rajon Miah, in creating a wider berth for newer ways to present Jamdani? I reflected on the woven garment, the weaver and the patron- these dots had to be connected. Jamdani is synonymous with the Bangladeshi feminine identity and so it raised the question of who is she now, But the Bangladeshi woman that I remember is markedly different to the Bangladeshi woman of today. A new age has dawned and new feminine identities are formed within the cradle of the old DNA. These are the future patrons of the Jamdani weaver and how can we “speak” to them in a way that preserves the craft and sustains the weaver communities.
As a practitioner of sacred art the answer lies in rootedness. Sacred geometry understands that long before language existed, our ancestors communicated through symbols or archetypes. Symbols of Power is an exploration of how such simple marks make powerful statements, and say much about our cultural identity. I understood as a resident of Dhara, the plight of the Jamdani weaver is because he lives in the world of archetypes and symbols, and when he weaves he becomes a transcendent phenomenon himself. Days in the residency taught us that his education is memory, poetry and maths. So when Rajon and I discussed together the possibility of different motifs that have meaning to the present generation, he was willing to listen.
Jamdani muslin is a unique story that starts off as a duet between the Brahmin weaver and the Muslim weaver from the moghul court. This was important for me to consider. You would not get muslin if it wasn’t for the Hindu weaver and Jamdani only exists once the muslim courtiers arrived. Not forgetting that the predecessors of the Mughals, Timur’s courts also brought with them a Mongolian Chinese aspect to the cultural legacy of Jamdani motifs.
I was familiar with the history of Islamic motifs in Jamdani but the question was how could I connect the past to the present? I sought to look at nature as does the weaver, and what is identifiable as Bangladeshi. The tiger and the water lily and the Buddhist trio of circles known as Cintamoni started to fill my sketchbook. I knew that the Turkish sultans wore tiger stripes or leopard spots as emblems of power whilst the Buddhist cintamoni appeared as a nod to balance and harmony. I knew that the ‘kolka’ or paisley is derived from the yin yang and this also appears heavily in Ottoman visual lexicon. I also knew the ottoman tulip represented the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) for whom muslin has an illustrious connection. The tulip is rendered to resemble a waterlily that encases a rumi/paisley motif. With all of this in mind I prepared the drawings. In the midst of the residency, we visited Demra and Alem Miah, Rajon’s father, the master weaver shared his insights on introducing new motifs, there was always room for change. What could not change was the grammar of jamdani motifs.
I developed the floating tiger stripes and the trio cintamoni symbols to represent emblematic symbols of Bangladesh– rooted in its native tapestry. Harmony and balance are depicted by simple curvilinear strokes. The challenge was for the weaver to translate this to the loom. And I witnessed a sacred craft in action. The weaver’s mind is busy with calculations whilst his loom is silent. He tells me that the hands must be nimble of the weavers, and they must work in silence, from dawn until night. The motifs I chose were not the issue, he is resilient but time is the key factor. They worked round the clock to complete the samples and the design board story depicts the transition from artist to artisan weaver and finally the woven cloth. The cloth samples show his initial attempts on the motifs and how they ‘improve’ as he progresses across the cloth. This exchange has created a deep trust between designer and weaver. We are connected by the delicate yet strong threads of our collaboration and despite our parallel worlds we are united in meditative art.
Here is a link to a video showing the process From Compass to Loom |
