Beschreibung:

Three cotton caps in various stages of work, (In-47b,c,d). According to Mir Abdullah they were made in 1848 for Wajid Ali Shah. Bought from Mir Abdullah, Lucknow, 1982. In 1982 I was staying in Lucknow, visiting Diamond, when I received a letter from Joss Graham. He was in Ahmenabad and had been asked by Martand Singh of The Calico Museum if he knew of someone who could record the work of the last living master of chikan embroidery (chikankari), Hasan Mirsa, before he died. If I was interested I should phone the museum. This meant booking a call for the next day and, though I tried this repeatedly, I never managed to get through. I decided I would like to do it anyway, and went ahead. Hasan Mirsa had died a few months previously, but had taught his wife and daughters and they agreed to teach me. The other grand master, Faiyaz Khan, had died blind and in poverty some while before, but his son was continuing. . Hasan MirsaÆs daughtersÆ æschoolÆ was a hut with no facilities, and they presumed I would stay for a year, the minimum period needed to even vaguely master the necessary skills. I explained my purpose and stayed for about a month. I was befriended by an old man, Nawab Mir Abdullah, who lived in the Shish Mahal district and was a dealer. He insisted that I work at his house as it was more comfortable. He also searched out pieces of chikan for me to buy. I went afterwards to The Calico Museum and it was agreed that I should write a monograph on chikan for them so I stayed there to work on their collections. John Irwin was there and we worked together. He gave me copies of all his books, but sadly asked for Indian Chintzes to be returned as he only had one copy. Soon after we were working at the Calico Museum there was a family squabble among the Sarabhais and Martand Singh was thrown out, and along with him both my project and JohnÆs. I continued working on chikan in England, especially in the Indian Institute Library and the Bodleian. Herta Puls, who had just written a book on molas for them, suggested I present the project to Shire Publications for their ethnography series. It was accepted. I wrote exactly what I wanted and it turned out to be 11,000 words, which was what they required. My youngest daughter, Imogen, did the drawings. It was my first book, and I felt very pleased to begin with a serious ethnographic study, particularly on a subject that no one had tackled before. It was published in 1989. Imogen subsequently did all the drawings for my books. See æChikan Embroidery: The Floral Whitework of IndiaÆ, published by Shire Ethnography.