Meet the dealers: Clive Rogers | The Textile Society Antique and Vintage Textile Far (AVTF) Manchester
Clive Rogers is based in the Cotswolds and has been attending both of the Textile Society’s Antique and Vintage Textile fairs since they started. He specialises in Antique Oriental carpets travelling to Turkey, India Central Asia and China as well as Europe. Clive also stocks antique and culturally rich ethnographic fabrics, working with interior designers and architects advising and supplying materials. On a recent buying trip to Mumbai he attended the opening of an exhibition of Indian textiles, When Indian Flowers bloomed in Different Lands Masterworks of Trade Textile 1250 - 1850
https://www.theheritagelab.in/events/when-indian-flowers-bloomed-in-distant-lands/
Hosted by collectors Praful and Shilpa Shah at the catchily renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya Museum, Mumbai ( read Prince of Wales Museum , Bombay ), the guests of honour were Rosemary Crill ( ex-curator South Asian textiles V&A London ) and Indian scholar Stephan Cohen who both gave introductory talks.
The exhibition showed a rich fraction of the collection but nevertheless completed a full range of it. Resist cotton textiles from around the 13th century traded to Egypt were displayed along with other resist textiles dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries traded to Indonesia, Thailand and Shri Lanka and the technically extraordinary Patola silk double ikats of the Jain communities.
Examples of Bengal silk embroideries traded by the Portuguese East India Company in the 16th to early 17th centuries stood alongside other European East India Company Palampore textiles of the Netherlands, Denmark and Great Britain many of which originated from the Coromandel Coast. Other parts of South and West India were included with some stunning silk embroideries. Notably all of the exhibits being found outside India where almost nothing has survived which served as a critical point of the exhibition and their repatriation.
The TAPI Collection of Indian textiles, was put together by Shilpa and Praful Shah in 1980s and has grown into probably the finest and most comprehensive collections of historic Indian textiles in the world outside national collections. TAPI is an acronym that stands for ‘Textiles & Art of the People of India’, also tipping a hat toward the Tapi River in textile town of Surat in Gujarat, where the collection is based and where the Shahs have a working textile mill. The exhibition remains open until 15th March 2023
Many of the dealers who attend the Textile Society AVTF are also experts in their field and this brings a unique element to the Fair. Come and see Clive on stands 11 and 12.