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

by Pika Ghosh; Padma Kaimal (Editor); K. Sivaramakrishnan (Editor)


From the publisher

In Bengal, mothers swaddle their infants and cover their beds in colorful textiles that are passed down through generations. They create these kantha from layers of soft, recycled fabric strengthened with running stitches and use them as shawls, covers, and seating mats.

Making Kantha, Making Home explores the social worlds shaped by the Bengali kantha that survive from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the first study of colonial-period women's embroidery that situates these objects historically and socially, Pika Ghosh brings technique and aesthetic choices into discussion with iconography and regional culture.

Ghosh uses ethnographic and archival research, inscriptions, and images to locate embroiderers' work within domestic networks and to show how imagery from poetry, drama, prints, and watercolors expresses kantha artists' visual literacy. Affinities with older textile practices include the region's lucrative maritime trade in embroideries with Europe, Africa, and China. This appraisal of individual objects alongside the people and stories behind the objects' creation elevates kantha beyond consideration as mere handcraft to recognition as art.

Details

  • Title Making Kantha, Making Home: Women at Work in Colonial Bengal
  • Author Pika Ghosh; Padma Kaimal (Editor); K. Sivaramakrishnan (Editor)
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Pages 284
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher University of Washington Press
  • ISBN 9780295746999 / 0295746998
  • Weight 2.25 lbs (1.02 kg)
  • Dimensions 10.3 x 7.2 x 0.9 in (26.16 x 18.29 x 2.29 cm)
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: Asian - General
    • Cultural Region: Indian
  • Library of Congress subjects Art and literature, Kanthas - History
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2019038426
  • Dewey Decimal Code 746.44

About the author

Pika Ghosh is visiting professor of religion at Haverford College. She is author of Temple to Love: Architecture and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Bengal, editor of Fashioning the Divine: South Asian Sculpture at the Ackland Art Museum, and coauthor of Cooking for the Gods: The Art of Home Ritual in Bengal.

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Making Kantha, Making Home: Women at Work in Colonial Bengal (Global South Asia)
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Making Kantha, Making Home: Women at Work in Colonial Bengal (Global South Asia)

by Ghosh, Pika; Kaimal, Padma [Series Editor]; Sivaramakrishnan, K. [Series Editor]; Yang, Anand A. [Series Editor];

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

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

by Pika Ghosh

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9780295746999
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0295746998
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New. In Bengal, mothers swaddle their infants and cover their beds in colorful textiles that are passed down through generations. They create these kantha from layers of soft, recycled fabric strengthened with running stitches and use them as shawls, covers, and seating mats. Making Kantha, Making Home explores the social worlds shaped by the Bengali kantha that survive from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the first study of colonial-period women's embroidery that situates these objects historically and socially, Pika Ghosh brings technique and aesthetic choices into discussion with iconography and regional culture. Ghosh uses ethnographic and archival research, inscriptions, and images to locate embroiderers' work within domestic networks and to show how imagery from poetry, drama, prints, and watercolors expresses kantha artists' visual literacy. Affinities with older textile practices include the region's lucrative maritime trade in embroideries with Europe,… Read More
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Making Kantha, Making Home � Women at Work in Colonial Bengal
Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different

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

by Ghosh, Pika/ Kaimal, Padma (Editor)/ Sivaramakrishnan, K. (Editor)/ Yang, Anand A. (Editor)

  • New
  • Hardcover
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New
Binding
Hardcover
ISBN 13
9780295746999
ISBN 10
0295746998
Quantity Available
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Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom
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Univ of Washington Pr, 2020. Hardcover. New. 264 pages. 10.25x7.25x1.00 inches.
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