Making Kantha, Making Home: Women at Work in Colonial Bengal

274 Pages·2020·20.013 MB·English

by  Pika Ghosh

Padma Kaimal
K. Sivaramakrishnan
Anand A. Yang
SerieS editorS
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Making Kantha,
Making Home
WOMEN AT WORK IN COLONIAL BENGAL
PIKA GHOSH
UniverSity of WaShington PreSS
Seattle
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Making Kantha, Making Home was supported by a grant from the McLellan
Endowment, established through the generosity of Martha McCleary McLellan
and Mary McLellan Williams.
Copyright © 2020 by the University of Washington Press
Design by Katrina Noble
Composed in Minion Pro, typeface designed by Robert Slimbach
Photographs are by the author unless otherwise noted.
24 23 22 21 20  5 4 3 2 1
Printed and bound in Korea
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
UniverSity of WaShington PreSS
uwapress.uw.edu
Library of CongreSS CataLoging-in-PUbLiCation data
Names: Ghosh, Pika, 1969– author.
Title: Making kantha, making home : women at work in colonial Bengal / Pika Ghosh.
Description: 1st. | Seattle : University of Washington Press, 2020. | Series: Global South Asia |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCn 2019038426 (print) | LCCn 2019038427 (ebook) | iSbn 9780295746999 (hardcover) |
iSbn 9780295747002 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSh: Kanthas—History. | Kanthas—Themes, motives. | Kanthas—Social aspects. |
Art, Bengali. | Art and literature.
Classification: LCC nK9276.a1 g46 2020 (print) | LCC nK9276.a1 (ebook) | ddC 746.44—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038426
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038427
The paper used in this publication is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
anSi z39.48–1984.∞
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For Ma
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ContentS
Acknowledgments ix
A Note on Transliteration xv
INTRODUCTION Kantha, Comfort, and Canon 3
CHAPTER 1 Layers, Thickness, and Resonance:
Making Home, Making Whole 53
CHAPTER 2 Manadasundari’s Gift: Worlds in the Household 85
CHAPTER 3 Kamala’s Mandala: A Space of One’s Own 125
CONCLUSION Some Loose Ends 159
Notes 165
Bibliography 211
Index 253
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aCKnoWLedgmentS
A book with a long gestation accrues many debts of gratitude, many stories along its
journey, and this one is no exception. At the top of my list are Darielle Mason and Les-
lie Essoglu of the South Asian Art Department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for
providing the first wonderful opportunity to examine the kantha in the Stella Kram-
risch and Jill and Sheldon Bonowitz collections for the 2009 exhibition Kantha: The
Embroidered Quilts of Bengal. It was an extraordinarily stimulating experience to work
closely with spectacular textiles, and I quickly fell in love with the material. I thank
the Costumes and Textile Department for generous access to textiles, files, and ideas.
Dilys Blum looked at several textiles with me and offered an invaluable sounding board
for ideas. Barbara Darlin facilitated opening up the same textiles and checking object
files many times in the past few years. I thank Sara Reiter and Bernice Morris for their
conservators’ eye and tools in looking at Kamala’s kantha with me. Tim Tiebout offered
his expertise as I struggled with my own photographs of the textiles.
Susan Bean not only gave me access to the many objects and images at the Peabody
Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, that helped me understand the range of mate-
rial I was mulling, but read drafts, offered astute comments at conference panels, and
popped images to me via email from her own fieldtrips. Rosemary Crill, Nick Barnard,
and Suhasini Sinha at the Victoria and Albert Museum generously accommodated
many requests, as did Richard Blurton at the British Museum. Sona Datta and Yuthika
Sharma, during their tenure at the British Museum, helped unfold many textiles and
scrolls. Shailendra Bhandare at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at
Oxford University kindly helped me make sense of an embroidered image. At the Yale
Center for British Art, during my month-long stint, I received extraordinary research
support from Gillian Forester and Elizabeth Fairman, who introduced me to things I
had assiduously avoided, urging me to consider sketchbooks and drawings for English
samplers, along with narrowing my list of manuscripts with a degree of precision I
could not have anticipated. Francis Lapka and Katherine Chabla, along with many
others, helped me learn to appreciate the worlds of copies and floating images, their
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lines and methods of making. Bindu Gude and Stephen Markel gave me generous
access to material at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Sonya Rhie Mace at
the Cleveland Museum of Art. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I thank Melinda
Watt, John Guy, and Kurt Behrendt. At the Ratti Textile Center, I thank Giovanna
Fiorino-Iannace, Eva DeAngelis-Glasser, Eva Labson, and Isabel Kim, the only textile
conservator who shared her technical toys and gave me views into textiles I could not
have imagined possible. Her enthusiasm when I spent time in the basement of the Met
filled my week with thrilling discoveries and deepened my sense of Indo-Portuguese
trade textiles.
In Kolkata, Ashis Chakraborty and Bijan Mondal at the Gurusaday Museum at
Bratacharigram offered me refuge and quiet to sit with an exceptional collection. I
gratefully acknowledge Aroti Dutt, who, in her last years, had opened many invis-
ible doors, mostly for her old school friend, my grandmother, as they supported my
work with avid interest and passion. Ruby Palchoudhuri and the many designers and
embroiderers affiliated with the Crafts Council of West Bengal, including Pritikana
Goswami, Bina Dey, and Mahua Lahiri, answered many queries that have greatly
enriched my interpretation of stitchwork. Jayanta Sengupta at the Victoria Memorial
Hall Museum in Kolkata invariably facilitated many last-minute requests to see and
photograph objects. Darshan Shah and Madhurima Chaudhuri were extraordinarily
generous in opening up the Weaver’s Studio collection over several visits. Shubhodeep
Chanda helped photograph material in several collections with me with much humor,
flexibility, and understanding during a hot and wet summer in Kolkata. In Bishnu-
pur, Gangadhar and Malati Das opened up their home for this project as they had
for earlier ones. In Delhi, I thank Shilpi Goswami at the Alkazi Foundation for her
enthusiasm and generosity in sharing access to materials and people. Dr. Joyoti Roy at
the National Museum, Dr. Nidhi Harit at the Crafts Museum, Dr. Subhashini Aryan
and B. N. Aryan at the K. C. Aryan Collection, and Mr. Chhote Bharany expanded
my experience of kantha and generously shared many insights. Romila Thapar offered
many questions of the material I was gathering over several cups of tea over the years. I
owe an equal debt to Rahul Jain at the Calico Museum in Ahmedabad, Perveen Ahmad
at the National Museum, and Dhaka and Teresa Pacheco Pereira at the Museu Nacional
de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.
At the University of North Carolina, two research and study semesters and a leave
from the Carolina Women’s Center gave me the time to read and research. A Humani-
ties and Fine Arts Award from UNC along with research support from the Philadelphia
Museum of Art supported the fieldwork in India in 2007–08. A second award from the
University of North Carolina Humanities and Fine Arts Award facilitated the field-
work undertaken to review comparative material in the United Kingdom. A Mellon
Medieval and Early Modern Studies Research and Travel Grant supported the work in
Spain and Portugal in 2011. Research in Bangladesh was funded by fellowships from
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the Social Science Research Council and the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies.
My time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Yale Center for British Art were
supported by an American Philosophical Society Franklin grant.
Aspects of this material has been presented at Emory University, Jadavpur Univer-
sity, Calcutta University, the Birla Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata, Syracuse University,
Middlebury College, the College of Charleston, Washington and Lee University, North
Carolina Central University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the New University of
Lisbon, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California at Berkeley, the
Asian Civilization Museum in Singapore, the Courtauld Institute, the annual meetings
of the College Art Association, and the Association for Asian Studies. Qamar Adamjee,
Molly Aitken, Ian Barrow, Sugata Bose, Rebecca Brown, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Pallabi
Chakravorty, Edward Cooke, Paul Courtright, Deepali Dewan, Brian Hatcher, Joyce
Flueckiger, Ann Gold, Katherine Hacker, Brian Hatcher, Mary Beth Heston, Sylvia
Houghteling, Deborah Hutton, Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Barbara Karl, Melissa Kerin,
Scott Kugle, Rochona Majumdar, Walter Melion, Cynthia Packert, Elisabeth Pastan,
Leela Prasad, Neeraja Poddar, Sumathi Ramaswamy, Yael Rice, Tamara Sears, Ajay
Sinha, Mrinalini Sinha, Christina Smylitopoulos, Ramya Sreenivasan, Sudipa Topdar,
and Susan Wadley answered questions, heard and read fragments, and offered valuable
insights that have made the book richer than I had imagined at its inception.
At the University of North Carolina, Sahar Amer, Glaire Anderson, Bernie Her-
man, Amanda Hughes, Wei-Cheng Lin, Susan Harbage Page, Dorothy Verkerk and
Lyneise Williams offered valuable suggestions, only some of which I have been able to
pursue here. More ineffable but steeped into the fabric of this manuscript is the faith
of Jaroslav Folda, Mary Sturgeon, and Darryl Gless. I thank them for believing in me,
and in the importance of this study. I have had the pleasure of fruitful dialogues with
a generation of students including Saydia Kamal, Klint Ericson, and Tammi Owens. I
am grateful to Beth Fischer for her assistance with assembling images for a preliminary
version of the manuscript. The generous support of Ken and Naomi Koltun-Fromm,
Richard Freedman, Ellen Schulteis, and Elana Wolff, in my brief time at Haverford
College, made the completion of the manuscript a pleasurable process. Another genera-
tion of students—Emily Chazen and Courtney Carter—helped me stay organized with
pictures and citations.
The formidable task of obtaining photographs from museum collections was eased
by many kind colleagues. For their extraordinary generosity, I thank Siddhartha Shah
at the Peabody Essex Museum, Conna Clark and Richard Sieber at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art. Imogen Laing at the British Museum and Avalon Fotheringham and
Jack Glover Gunn at the Victoria and Albert Museum helped me track down material
and supplied images. I thank Husna Moudud for permission to use her father’s poetry.
Prashanta Bhat, a stalwart throughout my life, prepared the two drawings of kantha
embroidery. Michelle Mielke reviewed the index at a critical point.
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At the University of Washington Press, Lorri Hagman shared her quiet strength,
patience, and faith, the qualities that I imagine makers of kantha acquired through their
work. Caitlin Tyler-Richards supported the interminable and intimidating process of
assembling intractable illustrations with much-appreciated kindness and humor. I am
deeply grateful for the two readers who responded empathetically and raised issues that
needed attention to thickening the layers of these pages.
This book would not have been possible without the handful of people who have
been there from the beginning. Pallabi Chakraborty’s many thoughtful observations
both intensified and alleviated my search for balance in narrative voice and ethical
stance, to acknowledge the vibrancy of the accounts, the humanity of the people who
shared them, and the complexities of my own subjective position in gaining insights,
interpreting, and reframing them. Attuned to the nuances of our shared middle-class
Bengali experiences, Pallabi has equally impressed upon my conceptualization of the
material over many conversations. Ian Barrow read and re-read the same chapter, offer-
ing immensely thoughtful and valuable insights, and Ned Cooke’s astuteness, perhaps
best exemplified in bibliographies and images, has immeasurably shaped my think-
ing. Padma Kaimal firmly told me to prioritize this project over another half-finished
manuscript, and also encouraged me to live and breathe, to value my children, the grief
of personal losses, and the solace of walks in the woods even as the book needed to be
finished. Rebecca Brown held my hand through the bumpy stretches yet again, as with
several earlier projects. I am fortunate to have received some of her gift for intuitively
hearing what I wanted to say and suggesting it with the lightest editorial touch. The
dogged reassurance from Michael Meister is beyond measure. This project also returns,
full circle, to my first days of graduate study under his guidance at the University of
Pennsylvania. In hindsight I appreciate the preliminary exploration of domestic imple-
ments at the Newark Museum, which, with his enthusiasm and supervision, became
the exhibition Cooking for the Gods in 1995. At that time, such domains were becoming
worthy of art historical investigation and museum display. The turn to textiles in my
current work is therefore a fabrication thickened and layered, recycled with strands of
thoughts developing over the decades between these two projects.
I cherish the Bengali women, named and unnamed, who opened their doors and
lives for this project with infinite warmth, graciousness, and trust. These opportunities
would also not have been available without the people who introduced some of them
to me, including Anima Nag Chaudhuri, Banasree Nag Chaudhuri, Sagarmoni Sarkar,
Papia and Samit Das, Subroto Sardar, Bulbul Basu, Gangadhar Das, Gitanjali Deb,
Rajat Deb, Purabi Basu, Nibedita Basu, Chandra Basu, Priyadarshini Basu, and Aditi
Basu. Sumita Bhattacharya, who always offered me a home in New York while I worked
at the Met, also gave me her children’s kantha. Many Bengalis from my life in Cha-
pel Hill contributed with thoughtfulness and kindness over conversations and casual
interactions including Sharif Zubaer and Laila Banu, Kaberi Das, Indrani Nandy, and
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