Maiwa is on the road travelling through Madhya Pradesh right now. One of the goals of this trip is to return to Banjara villages where we photographed people, examined their textiles and interviewed them about Banjara culture. As we do we are giving copies of the book back to the people who were invaluable in our research.

One of the most satisfying aspects of this journey has been seeing the women look through the book and ask questions about Banjara in other areas. It is also interesting to see the women look through and spot textiles and objects that they know.

Above is Chanubai receiving a copy of the book in Madhya Pradesh and below when we met her two years ago in 2014. Among the most interesting objects that were were able to track down was the Chunda. Chanubai modelled it for us in her village and explained how the threads on the bottom are braided into the hair so that the stick stands straight up. We found out on this trip that the woman who spent the 2 hours necessary to actually braid the chunda into her hair was closely related to the women of this village.


At our lecture this was one of the biggest questions: How will the Banjara react to see themselves and their culture in the book? The answer so far has been that the book has been received with a quiet amazement. There is always a group of people who gather when we enter a village and when the book is presented there is a great interaction as the pages are slowly turned and the images are reviewed. Sometimes a group in a village can be very high energy - but so far the book has been a kind of talisman, channeling a deep fascination with the larger question of who the Banjara are.

We also had a good encounter with an ernest young Banjara man. He wanted to know if the book could be made available in Hindi so that the more literate members of the village could read it. We have felt this need before and we would like to make it happen for the Banjara.

The book is available to order in the Maiwa Online store. It is also available at international online sellers such as amazon.com

The maiwa team on this trip are posting to instagram with the hashtag #maiwaontheroad Tim McLaughlin can be found on instagram at @tmcltmcl.

In Victorian England, during the heady summer of 1851, an estimated six-million people visited the “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations” (better known as the Great Exhibition) under the vitreous rooftops of the Crystal Palace, during the six months of it tenure in Hyde Park. During this time it realized a profit of almost two-hundred thousand pounds, enough to purchase 96 acres of land in South Kensington and to fund the construction of what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum. This fund also gave birth to the Museum of History and Science, The Royal Colleges of Art, and Music and the Royal Albert Hall.

Today the V&A’s holds the greatest collection of Indian Textiles in the world. As Director Martin Roth pointed out in his introductory notes to The Fabric of India, it is surprising, therefore, that there had never been a major exhibition of them, nor had there been a comprehensive volume such as The Fabric of India.

Now, such an undertaking is never the work of one person. Nevertheless, there is one person who did have a pivotal role to play in bringing these textiles to public view and championing the importance of such an exhibition. That person is Rosemary Crill. She has recently retired from her position as Senior Curator, Asian Department, Victoria and Albert Museum.

Rosemary is a paradigm of modesty and understatement. A favourite trick of hers, which she uses to field a question about textiles, is to speak as if you were giving her the answer. “I don’t know ... South East India isn’t it? Northern Orissa perhaps? What do you think? An ikat from say ... well ... maybe early twentieth century judging by the dyes and colours ... does that seem right?”

Our mutual friend, textile collector and author, John Gillow once described her in the following words: She’s incredibly sharp. She knows absolutely everything, but she’ll act like she doesn’t know any of it.”  This is not false modesty, rather it belies her deep conviction that what matters most is not her erudition, but the object itself.

Rosemary is a gifted curator, by which I mean she is able to organize objects into collections that make intuitive sense. She then augments this curatorial ability with deceptively simple prose.  And so she uses her subtle gifts to give a voice to the object. We are made to feel that the textiles of history are speaking directly to us.

From the introduction to Rosemary Crill's lecture by Tim McLaughlin.

See also Maiwa's review of the Fabric of India Exhibition and Tim McLaughlin's review of the Fabric of India Book (some of which is repeated in this introduction).