Muslin : Our Story

This is an account of a journey undertaken to revive the lost art of making muslin. What begins as a modest attempt to stage an exhibition of muslin dresses soon transforms in to a quest to recreate the fabric itself and ultimately , to discover one’s own past and an entire nation’s heritage. It leads the author from the fabled riverbanks to the Meghna to the villages where dwindling groups of spinners and weavers practice a vanished art of wooden looms. In between for the searches for long lost cotton seed in Kolkata and the Kew Gardens, peers at muslin collections from Turkey to Switzerland and ponders on the differences in jamdani between the two Bengals .It is a single-minded pursuit that opens up the world of cotton textiles, a world where the past and the future, cotton and colonialism, national narratives and royal haute couture intersect in remarkable ways. The book is also, finally, a compelling tale of camaraderie with the craftspeople, experts, artisans and designers of the world of cotton textiles.