Biswa Bangla at the London Design Festival
Biswa Bangla is like a window to the world of Bengal. We have left the drapes open so that you can gaze into the soul of its land and its people, its culture and heritage and feel the love, skill and hard work that has gone into the making of its handicrafts and its hand-woven fabrics.” – Rajiva Sinha, Principal Secretary, Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises and Textiles, Government of West Bengal, India
Left: Neishaa Gharat besides the muslin weaver as he works on the loom during a live demonstration of the intricate process at the designjunction show space. Right: A view of the loom.
A New Conversation on West Bengal
Deeply rooted in the distinctive and diverse craft culture of West Bengal, Biswa Bangla – an umbrella organization and state government initiative – showcases and promotes the work of the region’s long-established artisans and weavers. Aiming to achieve an international reach for the arts of West Bengal and interested in collaborating with international design practitioners, Biswa Bangla worked with designer Neishaa Gharat to showcase textiles and handicrafts in the 2015 London Design Festival.
Renowned as the largest design event in the world, the occasion annually attracts audiences of over 350,000 people and spans hundreds of London locations. Biswa Bangla showcased a collection of West Bengal crafts – focussing primarily on revival products ranging from kantha, jamdani, patachitra, masks, Indo-Portuguese shawls, and balaposh quilts – in two locations: the Victoria and Albert Museum, the London Design Festival’s official hub, and designjunction, a showspace deemed a key ‘design destination’ of the event.
Left : A kantha embroiderer engages a very interested audience at the designjunction show space. Right: Kali, a beautiful hand-made gold foil wooden mask, is displayed.
Apologies to Milan and Tokyo. Regrets to Stockholm and Paris. Forgive me, Eindhoven, Berlin, Barcelona and, most particularly, New York. But London is the design capital of the world.” – The New York Times
Left: the patichitra artist paints at designjunction. Right: the mask-maker displays his collection of pieces completed at the showspace.
Engaging Spaces
Neishaa Gharat designed installations for the festival’s official party at the Victoria and Albert Museum. In the museum’s lively grand entrance hall, Biswa Bangla – official ‘party supporters’ of the event – showcased heritage textiles, quilts, and masks of West Bengal. Bringing together 1,500 movers and shakers from the design sector, the party attracted an international audience in celebration of the 9-day festival.
At designjunction, Neishaa Gharat designed and curated the interactive showspace, which featured live demonstrations of shola mask making, kantha embroidery, muslin weaving, and patachitra. A key highlight of the space was a film installation created by Gharat and internationally-acclaimed street photographer Vineett Vohra. Illustrating the unique and beautiful creation of balaposh, a lightweight, handcrafted quilt traditionally distinctive to the nawabs of Bengal, the film featured Sakhawat Hussain Khan of Murshidabad – the only existing practitioner of this nearly extinct art form. Suitably projected onto a piece of balaposh, the installation visually addressed Neishaa Gharat’s creative interest, as she notes that ‘as a designer I am curious and fascinated about the act of making and revel in it as much as the product itself.’
Left: An Indo-Portuguese shawl is admired. Right: A visitor tries on an intricately hand-embroidered kantha quilt.
Thought-Provoking Talks
Biswa Bangla participated in two corresponding seminars: “Revival: Relationship between Indigenous Craft and Contemporary Design” at the Victoria and Albert Museum and “Good Design for Good Reason” at designjunction. Led by a panel of expert speakers –including Dr. Sonia Ashmore, a design historian and author of the book, Muslin; Kendall Robins, Fashion Programme Manager at the British Council UK, Rajiva Sinha, Principal Secretary of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises and Textiles; Partho Kar, the Chief Consultant of Biswa Bangla; and Neishaa Gharat – the talks and presentations stimulated interesting questions among the audience, and served as an opportunity to share Biswa Bangla’s vision of reviving the craft heritage of West Bengal and creating a sustainable future for its artisans.
Left: A thought-provoking panel presentation and lively discussion at the designjunction seminar. Right: Sonia Ashmore presents an insightful talk about muslin at the Biswa Bangla seminar talk set in the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Read more about the art of Balaoposh and the designjunction showspace!