The Cloth that Changed the World: India's Painted and Printed Cottons at Royal Ontario Museum
THE CLOTH THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
India’s Painted and Printed Cottons
September 12, 2020 — January 2, 2022
Made with novel cotton, vivid colors, and exuberant design, the painted and printed cottons of India changed human history; they revolutionized art, fashion, and science wherever they went around the globe. Featuring pieces from the Museum’s world-renowned collection, and several important international loans, this ROM-original exhibition explores how over thousands of years India’s artisans have created, perfected, and innovated these printed and painted multicolored cotton fabrics to fashion the body, honor divinities, and beautify palaces and homes.
Exploring the fascinating stories behind the making and trade of these glorious pieces past and present, The Cloth that Changed the World considers India’s textile innovations and their influences on fashion, trade, and industry around the world in places as far as Cairo, Japan, Sumatra, London, and Ottawa. They were the luxury fabric of their day, coveted by all, and one of the great inventions that drew foreigners to India’s shores hungry for more. Discover how through trade routes, encounters, and exchange, these cloths connected cultures, inspired imitation, and, quite literally, changed the world. Experience how India’s designers and makers today are innovating for new times and audiences.
Exhibition Preview
Detail showing the fine detailing in hand-drawn wax resist. Palampore (wall or bed hanging). Coastal southeast India, for the Western market, ca. 1720-1740. Cotton, hand-drawn, mordant-dyed, resist-dyed, painted dyes, printed adhesive with applied gold leaf, 365.6 x 260 cm. Gold leaf has been applied to this splendid palampore, suggesting that it would have been used by a very wealthy household.
ROM 934.4.13. Harry Wearne Collection. Gift of Mrs. Harry Wearne
Cloth that Changed the World: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz is a collection of essays, exploring the far-reaching influence this vividly printed and painted cotton cloth has had on the world, from its origins 5,000 years ago to its place in fashion and home décor today. The volume is the official companion to the ROM-original exhibition The Cloth that Changed the World: India's Painted and Printed Cottons.
The scholarly and beautifully illustrated publication draws from the Royal Ontario Museum’s own Indian chintz collection, which ranks as one of the best in the world. Featuring extensive new research, this multidisciplinary book traces the story of chintz and the indelible footprint it has left on the world. The publication combines vivid field photography of artisans at work with striking images from the ROM's world-class collection, as well as images from India’s fashion runways and the work of top designers embracing this heritage textile today.
"The world would be a drab place without India," says Sarah Fee, editor, Cloth that Changed the World and ROM Senior Curator of Eastern Hemisphere Fashion and Textiles. "Our blue jeans and printed T-shirts trace much of their lineage back to the ingenuity of India’s cotton printers and dyers. This exhibition and companion book celebrate how India ‘clothed the world’ in exuberantly colored cottons for thousands of years. It explores the art’s resiliency in the face of modern industrial imitation and shares the exciting stories of reviving natural dyes and hand skills in India today.”
Contributing writers include leading experts Ruth Barnes, Rosemary Crill, Steven Cohen, Deepali Dewan, Max Dionisio, Eiluned Edwards, Sarah Fee, Maria João Ferreira, Sylvia Houghteling, Peter Lee, Hanna Martinsen, Deborah A. Metsger, Alexandra Palmer, Divia Patel, Giorgio Riello, Rajarshi Sengupta, Philip Sykas, and João Teles e Cunha, and a preface by Sven Beckert, Harvard University's Laird Bell Professor of History.
Dr. Sara Fee
Dr. Sarah Fee is Senior Curator of Eastern Hemisphere fashion and textiles at the Royal Ontario Museum. She has degrees in Anthropology and African studies from Oxford University and the School of Oriental Studies, Paris, and in 2002, she guest-curated an exhibition on Madagascar for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. Today, she continues to focus on Malagasy historic textiles and fashions, in addition to those of Zanzibar and Western India. A research associate at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, and the Indian Ocean World Centre at McGill University, Fee also teaches at the University of Toronto’s Department of Art. Fee is a past Board Member of the Textile Society of America, and currently sits on the editorial board of the Textile Museum Journal (TMJ).
Click the image below to watch ROM Curator Conversations: Cloth That Changed The World.
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