Wild silk carries its own vocabulary of texture, one shaped by the hands that gather it, spin it and weave it into cloth. That vocabulary is at the centre of an upcoming London Textile Month session led by Shreya Kanoi and the Obeetee Craft Studio, exploring tasar textiles from Eastern India as living material ecosystems rather than simple fibres.
We're delighted to celebrate Obeetee's involvement in this year's programme by sharing the article on their work from the latest print issue of Selvedge: Issue 132, Legacy. Where mulberry silk dominates the popular imagination, the piece turns to India's three semi-wild silk caterpillars: tasar, muga and eri, each cultivated in open forest by Indigenous communities and each yielding cloth with its own colour, texture and character, from tasar's tawny greys to muga's shimmering gold. It is a portrait of a craft sustained not only by skill but by an entire ecosystem of farmers, spinners, reelers and weavers, and of the fragile balance between people and forest that keeps it alive.
Shreya Kanoi, who leads design and research at the Obeetee Craft Studio in Kolkata, brings twelve years of work with artisan communities across India and Nepal to their London Textile Month event. Her research into eastern India's weaving traditions, recognised through the Mrinalini Mukherjee Fellowship for her documentation of West Bengal's ethno-botanical crafts, informs an hour that moves from an immersive audio-visual portrait of a wild silk weaving village to a rare walk-through of material archives, tools and surface ornamentation, closing with an open conversation with the audience.
Read the full article below, as written by Karen Selk, and join Shreya Kanoi and the Obeetee Craft Studio at London Textile Month to experience the story in person.
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Further Information:
Join Shreya Kanoi at London Textile Month:
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Image Credits:
Lead: Courtesy of Shreya Kanoi and Obeetee Craft Studio
All further images as credited within the pages of the article.