Handicraft Project

This PPT includes a sequence of photos that I took (in few occasions by my friends, family, carefree passersby who offered to take my photos ) through my India trip.

Mr. R.K Srivastava, Dy Director of ‘Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts’. I met him the very next day I reached Delhi, India. The one line conclusion of the meeting was that India is losing out in handicrafts export because of quality, delivery and design issues. He was also the only government official with whom I could manage a photo (with other more serious government officials I found it very uncomfortable to ask if I can take a photo)

This is my first encounter in Ahmedabad. After checking into a hotel, I took a rickshaw (three tired vehicle) to visit Lawgarden, a small but well known roadside handicrafts market in the city. This place was cluttered up with small shops one after another in a row, full of dazzling embroidered clothes. The specialty of the market is that the traders come from small towns and villages rather than from seasoned urban setting.

One of the traders was happy to pose with me for a photo shoot. He was quite inquisitive of the price of my camera as I enquired about the price of the wall hanging shown behind.

Ms. Villoo Mirza, a vibrant lady, of SEWA TFC. She looks after SEWA’s systems and operations. I have spent quite a lot of time learning SEWA’s operations from her.

Carmen, SEWA’s head designer. She is soft spoken, has a lot of patience and is always ready to help out. She also helped me to understand nuances of handicraft product development form a design point of view.

The famed National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) at Gandhinagar, 40 KM away from Ahmedabad. Photography is not allowed inside the institute, alas! The institute has pioneered handicraft design and development in the country. Prof. Sangita Shroff of NIFT has been helping me in this project.

This has nothing to do with handicrafts. I went to visit Somnath, a holy pilgrimage near Ahmedabad on a Sunday, where I took the photo of local transport. Interestingly this is the major mode of transportation among many villages in Gujarat.

The National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad; another pioneering institute in the country that has boosted the handicrafts industry (another no photography inside! Zone). Prof. M.P Ranjan and Prof. Aditi of this institute has also helped me in my project.

Back to SEWA! The lady behind me on the computer is Sangita, who works as a graphic designer in SEWA. We are designing our samples on the computer. The Guy far behind is Satyanbhai, admisnitrator, who can help anyone in almost anything.

This is me, busily learning the different kinds of embroidery techniques of Gujarat. The pieces lying in the table were dug out of invemtory, and I am trying to study the quality differences between them.

Carmen (whom you already know) and Jigyana (another designer with SEWA TFC) are accompanying me to the local textile store. We are trying to analyze different kinds of raw material on which embroidery can be done as well as buy some material for experimentation.

The shopkeeper is showing us different kinds of material. The common custom over here is to sit down on the floor. The shopkeeper taken out piles of material from the cup-boards behind. Quite a luxury!

This is SEWA’s finished products inventory, when I went to visit the warehouse I almost choked. Perhaps this was my first realization that without efficiency product planning (that sells faster in the market), there is not much benefit in raw material planning as it would in any case end up in these piles after they are converted into finished products.

Two lonely souls sitting in the pile of inventory counting and recounting the stock.

Back to my product development and standardization. I realized that the best way to standardize the product development lifecycle is to pick up a target product category and design products in such as way that is both sensitive to the market and grassroots production constraints. The above gentleman is cutting the base material into appropriate sized. This would then be converted into kits (basically a packet containing the base material and appropriate threads that are then handed out to the artisans). To standardize product design, I kept the base material common for all the samples (of the same category) and stuck to standard color palettes.

Someone just mentioned about threads! Though these are only threads, but managing inventory of treads is really challenging. Imagine if there are 1000 designs and every design consumes 4 – 5 different colors of treads, in different quantities, of different thickness – how does one plan such a process? The answer lies in standardization which starts at the design phase. The above shop is from where I bought the threads. I bought the best quality of threads (as otherwise they often run color) and standardized.

This is a small machine shop in Khanpur, Ahmedabad where the base fabric (on which embroidery is done) is getting stitched.

After stitching, now it is pressing time. We had put some fusing behind the cloths so that they do not pucker up after the embroidery is done. The pressing is done to ensure that the fusing do not come out (after a lot of effort, we realized that ironing is not the best solution)

This is a khakawala. This guys job is to make holes with a pointed pen on a plastic sheet that is used as a stencil for imprinting design on cloths. Designs are imprinted on the cloths to ensure that the artisans can follow a definite pattern.

With the kits ready, I started traveling to the artisan communities to start the embroidery work on the samples and to study the grassroots (real!) operations. This photos is in a village called Dayapath in Kutch district of Gujarat. The main center in Kutch, which is Bhuj, is about 600Km by road from Ahmedabad. Dayapath is another 150 Km by road from Bhuj.

Mehtaben, the smiling lady (little shy of to appear in photos) is the local Aagewan. Aagewans are artisan leaders who coordinate work on behalf of SEWA. SEWA has aagewans appointed in almost every community who coordinate the local distribution of work among the communities. Just to see the outcome, contrary to the conventional practice I had asked the Aagewan to choose the color of the thread for every sample (which is otherwise chosen by the designers sitting in the cities). But I also kept one copy of every piece where I along with a designer chose the colors. It would be interesting to compare the outcomes.

I am doing a small workshop with the artisans who were invited to the Dayapat center of SEWA. I explained the work to the artisans. The two gujarati women sitting behind me are actually not artisans. They had come to complain to the SEWA coordinators (three SEWA personals accompanied me) that their roofs are leaking because of the rains. Anyways, I distributed the work to the artisans and chatted with them to understand how do they do interpretation of design.

After the workshop, I visited Mehtaben’s village (which is only few miles away from the national border) to distribute more work to the community. Most of the women work in their home, so it was important for me to see their real! workplace. It was a pleasure to find that their embroidery skills heavily reflects into their day to day lifestyle. One can observe the beautiful paintings done on their home with natural colors (This is infact Mehtaben’s mother’s home).

I was pretty tired, but Mehtaben insisted that I see the work of each of her neighbors. Within five minutes the empty veranda of the hut was full of women in colorful dresses. Some of them also got their kids and home elders to see(!) me. Mehtaben introduced me saying that I have come from America to see their work. I was not very comfortable with such a designation, but somehow I kept quite. All the women took out their needed, opened their respective kits and started to display their skills. Not knowing what to do I went around and took many pictures. (Refer to the next three slides)

The shiny close the my base material (some of you would soon see the final products for which I am keeping my fingers crossed). The women help each other in their work. I noticed that there are a couple of adept artisans, and the younger ones usually follow them. Mehtaben went abound to keep a watch on each of their work. I was not sure if they always work like this, or is it merely because of visitor from America was around. Later I would meet (Rupal and Rishi to know more about the grass roots realities).

This artisan got his young boy along with her. What was interesting to notice that the young boy was keenly watching what his mother was doing. There is a sense of pride in these communities about their work, and it is passed onto generations.

The youngest of the group. I noticed that she was occasionally advised by the elders of the group.

After a long day I am on my way to Sumrasa, a small village around 100km away from Dayapat. Endless Barron land on both sides of the road. Kutch is merely a desert, where it rains once in four years in most part of kutch. I started wandering where do these women get the motivation to be so colorful in their daily lives?

My reason of visiting Sumrasar was to meet with Judy Frater, who runs Kala Raksha, an NGO devoted to promote local handicrafts. The beautiful photo is of Kala Raksha Campus that includes a museum, craft production center, a warehouse and a guest house. Judy, who is an American, has been living in India for over 35 years now.

Judy is explaining me her beautiful meseum. I learned that the embroidery work is not only the skill of the local women but is deeply ingrained in their cultural heritage.

This is KiritBhai. I met Kititbahi when I visited Bhuj, Kutch. Kiritbhai works for Shriujan, another NGO devoted to grassroots development. An architect by education, Kiritbhai is deeply involved in the upliftment of the sector – a great designer and a great scholar of handicrafts.

I visited another village called Bhujodi, near Bhuj. This village is famous for their weiving work. The person who is displaying the shawl is Swamji, son of Vankar Vishram Valji, who won the national award for best handicraftsman in 1974. Handicraft production and trading is usually a family business, where it is transferred to generations after generations. The showl he is flaunting is worth Rs 15,000 ($300). no kidding!

I went to his workshop where he does weaving.

Some of the intricate weaving operations take week or even months to complete.

I visited the artisan communities in northern parts of Kutch. This is Bhiwandiarya, a artisan community that houses around 500 people.

In the house of one of the artisans. He was happy to pose for me. Their cleanliness impressed me.

From Bhiwandiarya I visited Hodko village in Kutch. These are the local communities. The men folks work with leather and the women folks does embroidery. Because of the summer heat they had stopped production.

This one is also in Hodko village, one of my favorite photos.

Again in Hodko, this piece if worth Rs 12,000 ($250) and taken an artisan over 6 months to prepare

From Hodko, I reached the picturesque Ludiya village.

Ludiya: another example of celebration of color.

Ludiya village: My friends Rupal Soni and Bipin. Rupal and another of my friends, Rishi has stayed in the Ludiya village for the last 9 months to start a rural design school in the village. Chilling out with them. This is their home for 9 months. We chatted for hours and I learned abut the real grass roots issues from them.

The dandi market (main market for handicrafts) in Bhuj city.