2003

Craft Training & Documentation, National Institute of Design, India

Craft Training is an important course in Textile Program at the National Institute of Design. In the Spring of 2000, I traveled to the Nilgiris, montane highlands in southern India. Here I lived in a traditional Toda hamlet, a mandhu, and trained with a family to embroider their textile tradition. At the time, little documentation of the craft had been done, and with the support of Toda expert Dr. Tarun Chabbra I could set the foundation of my understanding of this craft. I have visited the region several times, seeing the relationship between place, people and practice change dramatically. Toda embroidery was granted a GI tag in 2013.

This is an article on my initial documentation published in 2003, by the inflight magazine JetWings.