SHISHA, KANTHA, & KACHCHH
Shisha, Kantha, and Kachchh: South Asian Domestic Embroidery in the TATTER Collection is the first long-term exhibition in the Blue Library. Pulling together and highlighting pieces from our collection that present domestic textiles as works of art and their makers as artists, this exhibition will include shisha mirrorwork panels, kantha-stitched coverings for the home, and Kachchh (Kutch) dowry bags. These objects incorporate traditional motifs reflective of rural and nomadic life in the delta and desert regions of India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. While they display the creativity and individual hands of the women and girls who made them, they also show signs of life in their wear and stains.
This exhibition emerged as a complement to our educational programming, lending materiality and context to the techniques our beloved veteran teachers, Ekta Kaul and Shahnaz Khan, have been offering our TATTER community for years. We hope that this exhibition will be the first of many as we approach ten years as an institution and we can’t wait to share it with you.
Our in-person exhibition will be available for early viewing to students attending Ekta’s Illustrative and Geometric Kantha classes on August 13th and 14th. The exhibition will be open to the public from September 8th to December 20th, with an expanded digital exhibition freely available on our Substack.
FEATURED TECHNIQUES
SHISHA
is the process of attaching mirrors, coins, or otherwise reflective ornaments to cloth by encircling them with tightly stitched borders.
KACHCHH (Kutch)
is a technique created by stitching crosses side by side and then interconnecting them through a series of woven stitches.
KANTHA
is an embroidery and quilting technique in which cotton cloth, often reused from worn-out garments is layered together for durability and embellished with brightly colored threads.
Don’t think you’ll be able to make it to our Blue Library for the exhibition?
No worries! An expanded digital exhibition will also be available for free on our Substack.
Subscribe to TATTER: behind the seams now to stay in the loop when the digital exhibition is posted.
TATTER: behind the seams is a home for the cloth-conscious and cloth-curious. For those who want to get brainy or romantic about all things needle and thread, your home is here. From textile histories grounded in our object collection, to contemporary textile artists we’re thrilled for you to meet, to the messy and unexpected stories of a museum building itself, it beckons you to look closely, to linger in the folds, to unravel stories held in the knotted, looped, stitchy details. It’s an invitation to find yourself in cloth, find community in cloth, find our shared humanity in cloth.
