Hannah Sabapathy

This series of work reflects my ongoing research around colonial interaction with both raw and crafted materials from South Asia in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In the history of textile design, a close relationship exists between plant material and finished fabric — from the plants that created the fabrics such as cotton, linen, or jute, to the botanical materials that were used to dye or pattern the final product. During this period, both the raw and refined items were often displayed      side by side in exhibitions, classified by Europeans.  Further connections can be identified in the way plants and fabrics were collected and compiled. Specifically, circulating knowledge by cutting, compiling, or grafting specimens both textile and botanical into books.

One famous set of volumes, The Textile Manufactures of India (1866) was created by John Forbes Watson, who was both Reporter on the Products of India and Director of the India Museum. The twenty sets of eighteen volumes contained over seven hundred cut-up samples from South Asian textiles. Thirteen sets were gifted to industrial centres in Britain while the remaining seven were sent to South Asia. At the same time Forbes Watson published a companion volume, The Textile Manufactures and Costumes of the People of India (1866), where he discussed the specimens in more detail and the motivations behind the project. Forbes Watson argued that wealth was flowing from Britain to India for raw products, such as coffee, cotton and indigo and this tide of money could be reversed by selling British textiles to India. He hoped to achieve this in part by copying, imitating and reproducing South Asian designs, including items of clothing such as lungis and saris. The copied designs would then be sold back to South Asian consumers.

Dr Alexander Hunter, founder of The Madras School of Art like Forbes Watson was interested in the practical application of botanical materials and the school was engaged in the development of paper making, testing different plants for their suitability. Alexander Hunter worked with Botanist Hugh Cleghorn. In the RBGE archives there are botanical drawings by The Madras School of Art pupils and etchings of component parts of plants that on occasion were developed into patterned designs.

Responding to the presence of cut textiles and cut plant material in archives, this body of work brings together plants and patterns. Using printing methods that combine hand and machine cut stencils alongside mono-printing with cotton and linen, certain material qualities of woven checked saris and lungis are imitated through print. The work references items that hold familial connections for me, as my grandmother wore only saris, and my father, who continues to wear lungis at home. Images of plants such as Piper nigrum,  (black pepper) and Wrightia tinctoria,  (dyer’s oleander), both native to Tamil Nadu —my family’s home state— are inserted into the surface pattern. At times, the presence of the plant material is only felt through the absence of pattern. Printed on cotton, linen, and silk handmade paper,  the samples echo the textures of woven materials whilst attention is also drawn to the extraction of designs and raw materials.