CLOTH IS A CANVAS
From elegant home furnishings to beautiful textile wall art and wondrous large-scale immersive textile installations, cloth is a canvas full of possibilities for textile designer and artist Jayshree Poddar, Design Director, at Himatsingka Seide Limited, Bangalore, Karnataka state, India.
A regular contributor to Selvedge Magazine, Brinda Gill, interviews Jayshree Poddar, Design Director, at Himatsingka Seide.
Brinda Gill. How/when were you drawn to textiles?
Jayshree Poddar: I was initially keen to be a potter. However, interesting conversations in the early 1970s with my brother-in-law Dinesh Himatsingka -about textiles handwoven by weavers in villages in the state of Bihar that he was involved with at the time, and his dream of setting up a mill for furnishing fabrics – led me to the field of textiles. Being interested in aesthetics since childhood, beautiful and artistic textiles also appealed to me. I went on to do a diploma in Textile Design at the National Institute of Design in 1980.
Image: Jayshree Poddar. Photo courtesy of Syed Zubair.
Dinesh founded Himatsingka Seide Limited, a state-of-the-art mill to produce exclusive furnishings, in 1986 on the outskirts of Bangalore, and I joined them as their Design Director. Though I graduated from a premiere design institute, my actual learning happened on the shop floor. I have also done several exhibitions- of “Textiles as Art”- as a personal expression.
A regular contributor to Selvedge Magazine, Brinda Gill, interviews Jayshree Poddar, Design Director, at Himatsingka Seide.
Brinda Gill. How/when were you drawn to textiles?
Jayshree Poddar: I was initially keen to be a potter. However, interesting conversations in the early 1970s with my brother-in-law Dinesh Himatsingka -about textiles handwoven by weavers in villages in the state of Bihar that he was involved with at the time, and his dream of setting up a mill for furnishing fabrics – led me to the field of textiles. Being interested in aesthetics since childhood, beautiful and artistic textiles also appealed to me. I went on to do a diploma in Textile Design at the National Institute of Design in 1980.
Image: Jayshree Poddar. Photo courtesy of Syed Zubair.Dinesh founded Himatsingka Seide Limited, a state-of-the-art mill to produce exclusive furnishings, in 1986 on the outskirts of Bangalore, and I joined them as their Design Director. Though I graduated from a premiere design institute, my actual learning happened on the shop floor. I have also done several exhibitions- of “Textiles as Art”- as a personal expression.
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