Pop culture adopted mass-produced prints and bright colours, and gave the term kitsch new-found respectability. Considered a low-brow style of mass-produced art, the design style echoes the aesthetic of textile labels, print advertisements, and product labels.
In an annual exhibition, Ephemera , Artisans’ is hosting a display of old textile labels and chromolithographs carefully collected from across the country.
With over 200 vintage prints, the exhibition showcases labels that carry visuals of deities, mythological scenes from miniature paintings, and popular symbols, all used used as subliminal messages to engage with the unlettered Indian consumer of colonial India.
Precursors to designRadhi Parekh, director of Artisans’, says, “These colourful chromolithographs are precursors of graphic design and mass communication, visualised in Britain, printed in Germany, and shipped to distant markets in colonial India.”
The collection holds personal significance for Parekh. Her family, which owns The Aryodaya Spinning and Weaving Co. Ltd. in Ahmedabad, was involved in the Swadeshi movement. The mill provided Indians an alternative to British cloth. The clothes were labelled with a chromolithograph of a dancing lady, which now hangs on the walls of the gallery.
The wholesale markets still hold a significant portion of fabrics that are stamped with an emblem belonging to the families who owned the mills. These chromolithographs are what Parekh has been after.
She says, “Being a graphic designer, studying the design form that existed during the birth of the industrial revolution, and the beginning of our country’s market economy is fascinating.”
As the labels were designed either in Manchester or Glasgow, the human figures on the miniature paintings were usually Caucasian-looking women painted in art nouveau and pre-Raphaelite styles.
The show has a range of labels that provide a fascinating insight into the way the colonial power interacted with the Indian consumer, and played on our mythological beliefs.
In a chromolithograph produced by a Manchester mill, F. Steiner & Co. during the 1880s, Lord Krishna is seen playing the flute among trees, as Radha sits on a swing, surrounded by her coterie and a few peacocks. The British designers were heavily influenced by Rajasthani painters.
Boon to historiansThe prints help historians and collectors study the impact the discovery of photography and modern art had on designers and consumers.
In 1894, India’s first modern artist, Raja Ravi Varma, set-up the Ravi Varma Lithographic Press in Bombay. His humanised depiction of gods and goddesses can be seen in a collection of oleographs, chromolithographs, offset prints and postcards available at the exhibition.
Anthropologist and cultural historian Jyotindra Jain believes the new form of imagery grew out of a major cultural and technological foundation which was influenced by the colonial school of art, exposure to European images circulating in the Indian market, the advent of new art materials, new methids of reproduction, including new techniques of engraving, lithography and oleography, and photography and the proscenium stage. As a result, the labels on the bales of cotton cloth played a large role in documenting a visual culture.
Over the years, Parekh says, textile dealers are as much on the lookout for these artworks for her, as she is for them.
As the prints start at a reasonable price (Rs. 3,000), Parekh believes they make for easy collectibles for history aficionados. She says, “We are always so involved in looking at our ancient history that we haven’t bothered to discover our very recent past.” It’s interesting to note that in the timeline of history even 100-year-old prints are considered to be part of a fairly modern past.
The author is a freelance writer
Ephemera 2016: Vintage Textile Labels and Chromolithographs: Artisans’, Kala Ghoda, till August 17.
