The two words ‘metallic’ and ‘kani’ when placed together open an immediate dialogue between the traditional and contemporary. Where the complex sustenance of handmade textiles is impossible without modernisation. Especially the Kashmiri kani which in its traditional form did not include the use of metallic threads or zari blended yarn. Now, made by the Delhi-based Kashmir Loom, these kanis created on wooden sticks or bobbins were handwoven with zari yarn instead of just multi-coloured threads. This contemporary version finds pride of place at the Heirloom Project Bazaar at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

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By Shefalee Vasudev

THE CRAFTSMANSHIP ISSUE

Textile historian, designer and co-founder of Kashmir Loom, Housego has helped inspire a generation of skilled craftsmen and set up one of the finest ateliers dealing in Cashmere. In this issue, she shares a photo album of Kashmir Loom and its impeccable, lustrous pashmina.

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One woman's quest to find a legendary shawl painted by John Singer Sargent

Decades after he painted them, Sargent’s dramatic representations captured the imagination of his great-niece, English textile authority Jenny Housego, whose grandmother, Violet Sargent Ormond, was the artist’s sister. A former curator at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Housego moved to New Delhi in 1989, devoting herself to the creation of luxurious handmade textiles.

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British textile historian Jenny Housego talks about her memoir, A Woven Life

Through her memoir, A Woven Life, co-written by journalist Maya Mirchandani, she takes a trip down memory lane, reminiscing the adventurous journey she undertook from war-hit England to the valleys of Kashmir. This, however, was not the life she had planned while growing up during the Cold War. “I had imagined myself sitting astride the Berlin Wall sending entirely wrong information to both the British and German army, while working as a spy!” she laughs.

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