A Handbook of Indian Textiles

"A Handbook of Indian Textiles is an engaging guide to the subcontinent’s vast textile heritage—where history, livelihood, and artistry are woven into everyday cloth. Written for one curious about textiles, this compact volume offers a clear, technique-led way into India’s extraordinary handmade traditions. Introducing an illuminating framework for the ‘location of design’ to show the stage at which pattern enters the fabric—Pre-Loom, On-Loom or Post-Loom—the book maps handwoven and handcrafted techniques into an accessible structure, surveying major Sari traditions across India, noting provenance along the way. From handloom weaving to printing, painting, dyeing, and embroidery, it traces how textiles are made—and how methods, materials, places, and purposes encode multiple narratives of community, ritual, economy and exchange. Concise, practical and richly informed, the handbook is a useful companion for anyone exploring fabrics." Ruchira Ghose is an economist-turned cultural researcher and scholar. She has served as the Chairperson at National Handicrafts and Handloom Museum, a Tagore National Fellow at IGNCA, where her work focussed on Indian textiles and museum practice, a governing body member of Sahapedia, and an advisor to Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute’s Livelihood Creation Project. Mushtak Khan is a well-known name in the field of Indian folk-tribal art and crafts. He has led pioneering field research, curated museum collections, advised institutions and cultural projects, published extensively, and contributed to building heritage resources for the last four decades. Read more