The late Hariyaben Bhanani explains the toys she designed and created to an American student. Hariyaben couldn’t bear to see scraps of painstakingly embroidered fabric thrown away, so she rescued them, took them home, and painstakingly patched them together to form elephants, camels and dolls that she stuffed with other fabric remnants. She lived the spirit of sustainability.

In her novel Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver brilliantly illuminates the climate crisis through a discussion between her Appalachian protagonist and an environmental activist. ‘Bring your own containers to restaurants for leftovers,’ the activist says, ‘and minimize air travel.’  Dellarobia hasn’t eaten in a restaurant for 2 years and has never been on a plane.  Nor does she drink bottled water, or have disposable income to invest in social responsibility.

The 99% have contributed minimally to the environmental crisis. Artisans of Kutch in fact live astonishingly eco-friendly lives. Designers of au courant sustainable fashion who come to Kutch villages seeking textile waste to up-cycle are routinely turned away empty handed. Original scale traditional textiles of Kutch were rooted in sustainability. Weavers used any residual yarn in finishing, or in the next textile. Ajrakh and batik printers recycled resist substances, and exhausted natural dyes. Village women stitched garments with no-waste patterns. None of these textiles used fossil fuel energy. Scaled up production today trades some of these principles for speed and income. Still, environmentally sound grounding is a good reason to use hand crafted products.

But even more valuable in becoming environmentally responsible is understanding the ethos of hand craft. If we slow down to hand craft speed, we can observe why artisans work as they do.  Vasant Rao meticulously collects the gold dust from a gold pendant he filed to perfection. Shakilbhai salvages the wax from today’s batik to use tomorrow. Hariyaben collects the textile cuttings from the tailoring room and fashions delightful animal toys. In the local craft ecosystem described earlier, value was the basis of traditional design and creation.  Artisans did not waste because they valued materials, their own skills and efforts, and their consumers.

The most basic tenet of conservation is that you preserve what you value. We can learn more than craft skills from traditional artisans.  Can we engage them as teachers in early education and invite them to share world views as well as technology?

August 5, 2023

Dr. Ismailbhai Khatri and other Advisors teach artisan students about traditional textiles at Somaiya Kala Vidya in 2018

In “Crafting the Nation in Colonial India” McGowan describes how craft was swept into the industrialization of post-independence India as a complementary means of production. Most early 20^th C. reformers, she writes, agreed that crafts were a distinct sector of the economy characterized by traditional styles, technologies, labor, and organization… which provided outsiders the excuse to intervene. They felt that artisans were too tradition-bound to handle requisite changes on their own.

The perception that artisans need help in order to survive continues to drive the range of government policies and schemes for the craft sector. “Helping” is a vertical dynamic: the powerful help the less powerful, and the notion of helping serves to reinforce existing power differentials.

Further, welfare is a quick fix that can only the maintain status quo. Government schemes are often focused on skill upgradation, assuming that skill is the artisan’s capacity.  Real change is slow; it comes through analysis of shortcomings and education. Artisans have skills.  What they lack is the ability to directly reach markets that value craft.

Middlemen- who must include designers, NGOs and even the government as well as traders- are often blamed for artisan adversity. Intermediaries fill a need, providing a gamut of methods to access markets.  With education about market segments, appropriate design innovation, pricing and promotion, effective communication with clients, and businesses management in today’s world, artisans can begin to access appropriate markets themselves.

Dr. Ismailbhai Khatri, Ajrakh master artisan and community leader, said it all when in 2003 he was asked what the government can do for artisans. “Provide good roads, clean water, reliable phone and mail service, and relevant education within a reasonable proximity to villages,” he said.  “In addition to that, socialized medicine and effluent treatment would benefit us a lot. If the government just provides these basic facilities, we can take care of craft.  If we can devote our energies fully to our work, there is no need for subsidy!”

July 22, 2023

What’s wrong with these pictures? The last handloom weaver in a small Karnataka village weaves plain white yardage for school uniforms; a poly-cotton railway sheet proudly displays the handloom label.

Technology is a basic element of making craft.  But there is a debate about how much technology is ok.  In some Khadi centers, yarn is spun on ambar charkhas and woven (mostly by women) on what are in reality human-powered power looms. The logic seems that as long as electricity is not used, weaving and spinning are hand work.  This is pushing a technical point –and missing the essence.

The essence of hand craft is that it is made by an individual.  So the first question is, how do we value that person?  There is no inherent merit in pretending we don’t have access to advances in technology.  (Who hand writes or calculates in their heads?)  Today, as craft is livelihood in a market economy, artisans must calculate speed and time as well as quality. Advanced technology can enhance these facets.  But if we value the essence of hand craft, the real question is, how much creative agency do artisans use, whether with hand tools or electrically powered tools?  How are we investing in the artisan?

In Kutch -and elsewhere- there is a troubling trend of de-skilling and under-valuing traditional artisans.  Individuals who can create intricate patterns with nearly unlimited possibilities in extra weft technique are instead weaving plain-weave undyed hand loom yardage. I question whether there is more value in this hand loom fabric than the same fabric woven on a power loom.

The value of human creativity is in the little details that bring a textile alive, in a glimpse of how the individual met a challenge and created something new.

One can use ancient technology without imagination- such as plain-weave hand loom yardage.  One can also use new technology creatively by pushing its limits.  The question for hand craft is who is master?  Artisan, machine, or marketer?

July 1, 2023

In India, social status doesn’t always relate to economic status. In the Hindu caste system, working with hands is inversely proportional to social status. Among makers, material and product further determined social status.  Because shoemakers tanned leather and made footwear, their social status was low.  In the 1960s when local markets were lost to industrially produced alternatives, connection to distant markets elevated economic status. Government awards mitigated social status in those markets. But in provincial Kutch, it remained unchanged.  By the end of the century, many Kutch leather artisans gave up their tradition without a lucrative alternative to disengage with social stigma.  Others turned to products other than footwear to improve economic and social status.

The traditional social status of Kutch wool weavers is similar. Responding to loss of local markets in the ‘60s, weavers who could connect to urban markets gained economic status, usually employing community members who could not directly reach markets. From 2005, design education enabled more artisans direct access to urban markets.  These connections led to material and product diversification. Kutch weavers with direct market access have dramatically increased economic status and, in urban settings, their social status.  However, local caste status has changed far less.

In Karnataka, weavers produce Ilkal saris in factory-like workshops and until recently had no direct access to markets. Handloom became so devalued that powerloom may cost more than hand woven saris.  The social status of weavers is so low that a loom in the house can be a deal breaker for a marriage proposal.

Goldsmith communities work with precious metals, but are traditionally segregated into makers, of lower social status, and sellers, leading to aspirations to trade rather than make. Today, Kutch goldsmiths have hired Bengali artisans to make. Further, customers often prefer the perfection of industrially produced ornaments. The next generation aspires to leave their tradition.

The pervasive devaluing of hand work continues to pose the greatest challenge to maker communities.

June 17, 2023

In 2003 when I began developing a design school for artisans, people inevitably asked:

“Oh, so you are teaching them craft?”
No, all students are traditional artisans.
“Oh, so you are giving them designs?”

The 2 questions circumscribe perceived limitations of artisans; few people can comprehend that artisans can design.

“Design” is an industrial concept. There is no Indian word for design as separate from creating. Word and concept were introduced with industrialization and established a hierarchy: concepts as more valuable than skills.

I developed design education for artisans to return agency to craft traditions, and to raise the value of artisans by emphasizing the cognitive aspect of craft. I called my approach therapeutic- encouraging students to know what they know. There was more, of course, a year of hard work and joy.

I envisioned graduates as the artisans of generations past, and the studio artisans of my western upbringing. I coined the term Artisan Designer to mean an artisan who graduated from a year-long program in design, to distinguish graduates from artisans producing professional designers’ work. It resonated perfectly and graduates ran with it.

But there was a powerful counterforce: the issue of scale. In contemporary India, craft is largely understood as manufacturing, and artisans are pressured to scale up. Years ago, I asked Artisan Design graduates about scale. Junedbhai said scale had enabled his success. Azizbhai said an artisan must choose between quality and scale. Dayabhai said when there is scale, it is no longer craft.

How does the Artisan Designer then balance creation and scale to establish a viable livelihood? Dayabhai has since hired artisans to weave for him. But, he emphasizes, he prioritizes them over product. Without artisans there is no craft, he says. The late Hariyaben Bhanani hired patchwork artisans but didn’t give them designs to copy; she gave them concepts, so each piece was artisan designed.

The term “Artisan Designer” has proliferated, and inevitably its meaning is diluted. Maintaining value for artisans conceiving and creating their own work is an ongoing challenge.