The colours and conversations of India Craft Week in Delhi

The fourth edition of India Craft Week is a journey in continuation to bring together the Indian creators of rare arts and crafts of India and the connoisseurs from across the world

It is not often that one gets to see or buy a signature Rogan art product made by Padma Shri awardee Abdul Gafur Khatri. Rogan, the fine ancient Persian art is exclusive to his family in Nirona village in Kutch, Gujarat, and can be bought only from them directly. For instance, you won’t find a Rogan sari, which has the stamp of Gafur’s talent, which won him the National Award in 2019, in any fair or market.

“Our drawing is our legacy,” says Gafur, now in Delhi to participate in the fourth chapter of the India Craft Week (ICW), supported by the World Crafts Council. It is bigger than previous years in terms of the size of the venue, participation and unique sections added to the event.

“The craft sector needs an axis shift from ‘not for profit’ to ‘for profits’, given the exquisite work our master artisans produce,” says Iti Tyagi, founder of ICW. “The objective is to bring rural talent to the fore and get business and international projects for our traditional hand-crafted works by connecting those with modern and global consumers,” she adds.

Gafur has attended the ICW since its inception in 2018, and is among the 75 artists and 50 crafts persons participating this year. He says the platform provides him an opportunity to showcase Rogan textile art to a larger audience that appreciates art.

Rogan art is done on poplin cotton or silk using thick shiny paint that is made by heating castor oil and mixing the residue with cold water till it thickens into a sticky paste called Rogan. To this are added natural vegetable colour pigments. Elaborate designs are produced freehand by trailing thread-like strands of paint with a stylus. When half of a design is painted, the cloth is folded in half to transfer a mirror image to the other half of the fabric.

Floral motifs, animals and local folk art lead the designs that flow from imagination. “It is the artist’s imagination on the cloth. There is no tracing or sketching and no drawings are referred to,” says Gafur, who is credited with the resurgence of the art form in the early eighties, after it faced extinction in the wake of consecutive years of drought in his village five decades ago. He has been instrumental in training and awakening the interest in his village to revive Rogan art. Ten of his relatives, including his son, who is the eighth generation, also pursue the art.

J&K State awardee Khwaja Nazir Ali from Srinagar is a fourth generation master craftsperson of the 500-year-old Sozni embroidery. One of his ultra-luxe creation, a pashmina shawl with silk thread embroidery on both sides, took him seven years to complete. It was like a meditation, he says. The popular needle-point technique is one of the rarest embroidery forms with which the craftspersons create stunning compositions.