Calico Museum- Ideology, History, Myth

“If you are Clifford, how would you interpret the museum, what is it symbolic of?”

The museum was started in 1949 at Shahi Baugh inside a carved wooden Haveli and it is financed by the Calico textile Mills. Ahmedabad being the centre of Textile Industry in those times was selected as the best place for the museum. There are textiles older than 500 years belonging to the 18^th and 19^th century.  As the place is built inside a Haveli it is cool and damp which gives us a cave like experience. It has a clay flooring. The interlinking rooms and display at different levels make it difficult to get out without an escort

Cocks were used in Bali as a vehicle to talk about the culture, here in Calico museum the textiles represented people going about their daily chores, the celebrations, deities, animals and the flowery designs.  All the clothes represent a certain aspect of the culture. Whatever the artists saw they expressed it through their brush and needles. The textiles were a medium of communication for them. The bird represented the male virtues for the Balinese, here the paintings represent the history, religion, way of life and thoughts of various Indian tribes. Paintings play the role of windows through which we can take peep into the history and culture.

Calico museum is an amalgam of the diverse cultures of India. A Kutchi item showed people dancing to the garba tunes whereas a Punjabi bed sheet displayed people drinking and partying. There were paintings of people at work, showing their clothes, interaction and way of life. Like the wide variety of cocks, here we can see a wide variety of textiles. We can correlate and identify the different cultures of the different tribes. The Kutch work had flashy colours and mirror work. Orissa’s textiles had a lot of patch work and bright colours. Rajasthani clothes had different types of tie and die work. Bengali work had dull colours and lot of embroidery done using different varieties of stitches.

There were robes of the Moghul emperors, carpets, curtains, sarongs, paintings, shawls, folk art, block printing textiles, mirror work, sarees, turbans, embroideries, furniture, handicrafts, tents, Jain manuscripts and a dazzling array of rich Indian heritage. The arrangement was subtle and rich. No item was given special attention and nothing was isolated. Each piece reflected delicacy, perfection, uniqueness, patience and a lot of hard work and dedication put in to create it. There was a rising row of flowery designs, symmetrical shapes, repetitive designs, and overlapping designs. Even space was used to create a different view of seeing. We have to see through the paintings to see the emotions being reflected from each entity.

Balinese nurtured their cocks with great care and affection, here the textiles are given special treatment and preserved properly. Special care is taken so as not to damage the clothes from dirt, temperature fluctuation, dust, pollution, heat and humidity. There is very dim lighting and lot of trees are planted around to keep a check on humidity. Unlike all other museums here one needs to take a prior permission to visit the place as only 20 people are allowed inside at one go because the human perspiration cause the moisture levels to rise which damages the clothes. Visitors are not allowed to touch, feel and experience the warmth of the clothes. Work from different periods is displayed in huge glass cases in a way we would want to savour, soak in the sensation and linger over each work.

Few informative labels are kept and the rest of the information is conveyed by the guide who is like the umpire and nobody disobeys her instructions. There were lion motifs on the clothes meant for export which tells us about the foreign relations. In all the visit to calico was indeed an enriching experience.