Rare Books on Indian Textiles and Clothing

Ethnographic surveys and visual documentation projects were sanctioned by the then British Government in India from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries in an effort to maintain a record of the people, culture, lifestyle, attires and religious customs of the people from various Indian Presidencies. Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum's collection has several of these rare books such as 'The People of India' by John William Kaye and John Forbes Watson, 'The Textile Manufactures and the Costumes of the People of India' by John Forbes Watson, 'The Costume of Hindostan' by Balthazar Solvyns, 'Typical Pictures of Indian Natives' by F. Coleman, 'Indian Pictoral Education' by F. Coleman, published by The Times of India, 'Women of India' and 'Peoples of Bombay' by O. Rothfeld, illustrated by Rao Bahadur M.V. Dhurandhar.

Regarded as an "industrial museum", the Watson's collection comprised of 20 sets of 18 volumes. Each volume consisted of mounted and classified samples of Indian textiles, called as “working samples” with a total of seven hundred samples in all.

Each page with individual fabric sample is numbered and labeled with detailed information: the name of the material, the quality, the community it is worn by, the length of the fabric, its price, weight, provenance and the place of purchase - all the key information necessary for the English textile manufacturers.

Each fabric sample was tucked under and held in place on the mount by a horizontal band near the bottom of the page. This fabric sample is printed coarse cotton from Masulipatanam in present day Andhra Pradesh, formerly a part of the Madras Presidency.

An accompanying volume titled 'The Textile Manufactures of India and The Costumes of the People of India' was published in 1866 to guide the British manufacturers how different kinds of clothes are worn in India.

The accompanying volume has several coloured plates detailing the variety of traditional attires and modes of dressing.

The compiled fabric pieces were cut from the textiles in the stores of the India Office in London, which was a repository of archives related to the British East India Company.

The volumes of Textile Manufactures include turbans, garment pieces for men and women, dhoti, saris, calicos, muslins, silks, woollens and 'piece goods'.

The Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum's collection includes miniature prints from mainly Volume 4 of this work. These illustrations depict various professions practiced in India, including the processes of manufacturing textiles and the different kinds of textile artisans.

In 1807 Edward Orme published a pirated copy titled “The Costumes of Hindostan” in which he reproduced 60 select drawings by Solvyns and the text was provided in both, English and French. These drawings were modified and coloured in pastel shades for mass appeal. The illustrations of the artisans depict a craftsman at work in the centre of the page.

The Revolt of 1857 had created an atmosphere of suspicion of the local inhabitants among the British administrators, which, combined with the increased popularity of fields like anthropology and ethnology, resulted in a Government of India memorandum requesting local governments to collect photographs of the indigenous people under their jurisdiction.

The culmination of these efforts was large-scale works like the six-volume series titled 'The People of India: A series of Photographic Illustrations with Descriptive Letterpress of The Races and Tribes of Hindustan' (1868). Works like these catered on the whole to a European market more interested in exotic studies than scholarly precision. The classifications are erratic, sometimes by caste, sometimes by tribe other times by sect or even individuals.

The Museum collection includes clay models, created in the early 20th century, depicting various craftsmen such as the embroiders, which were modeled on W.H. Griggs' sketches of craftsmen and artisans.

W.H. Griggs published seventeen volumes of the Journal before the end of World War I. The Museum’s library has a collection of Journal of Art volumes published in the years 1884 to 1914. John Lockwood Kipling, editor, and Sir George Birdwood, Curator of the Museum from 1858 to 1868, were among the major contributors to the Journal.

The selected plates from the journal showcase textile craftsmen.

'Typical Pictures of Indian Natives' helped define a genre of popular imagery that within a few years would be globally disseminated in the form of postcards (Pinney, 1997: 56). The hand coloured photographs were accompanied by text describing characteristics of each community.

This work inspired some of the clay models depicting the cosmopolitan nature and lifestyle of Mumbai in the late 19th to the early 20th century.

'Typical Pictures of Indian Natives' also includes an image showing a "postman standing before a rustic studio backdrop with a letter in his outstretched hand. He is clad in standard-issue clothes, 'a good serviceable blue dungaree uniform and a waterproof cape during the monsoon’" (Pinney, C.1997).

This book included Rothfeld's observation about the lifestyle, marriage, aristocratic classes and attitudes of Indian women from various sections of the Indian society and the traditional regional attires.

M.V. Dhurandhar was renowned for his paintings of Indian lifestyle and communities, many of which were used as illustrations or postcards.

"Khojas. They are the followers of Aga Khan".

Each illustration had a title of the community and a short description.

M.V. Dhurandhar was renowned for his paintings of Indian lifestyle and communities, many of which were used as book illustrations or postcards.

'Peoples of Bombay' highlighted the traditional attires of different types of communities such as the Kolis, the Parsis, the Bohras, the Bhatias, the Khojas, Pathan, and many more.