The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

336 THE HINDU RENAISSANCE
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England .
Their patterns are made up ofelements
of European, Indian, and even Chinese origin,
produced to satisfy the Western taste for the
exotic, but united into an individual design by
Indian hands [267]. There is evidence that the
same stencils were used for painted, as well as
embroidered, quilts. Generally, chain stitch was
the technique, but in later examples many fancy
stitches were employed to show off the glossy
fineness of the satin threads. Among the most
splendid of all Indian textiles are the painted
cotton hangings of Golconda. 13 These cotton
paintings were produced by guilds of Hindu
craftsmen in the first half of the seventeenth
century for the markets of Persia, the Mogul
Empire, and Europe. Presumably they were
assembled from pattern books based on an earlier
tradition, perhaps the mural art of Vijayanagar.
The designs were transferred to cloth by means
of elaborate stencils. A particularly beautiful
seventeenth-century hanging, formerly in a
267. Embroidered cotton bed-hanging from Gujarat.
Ashburnham, Sussex, Lady Ashburnham
268. Embroidered knuckle-pad from Jaipur.
London, Victoria and Albert Museum
Japanese collection [269], is perhaps the earliest
of all, and shows unmistakable connexions with
the wall-paintings of the Lapakshi temple. 14
We recognize such mannerisms as the heads
and feet presented in profile and the flaring
draperies with repeated rippling lines. Such
details as the typically South Indian temple
pavilions at the top of the composition, and the
pattern of monkeys in flowering trees, occur in
many other examples of these textiles. Typical
of later Indian embroidery are the knuckle-pad
covers for shields of the Rajput Period. These
are usually worked in cross stitch and silver
thread. The early eighteenth-century example
depicting a lady and a peacock [268] is from
Jaipur, and is like a translation of a Central Indian
miniature into textile design.
An epitome of the jewelled ornaments of
the Rajput courts may be seen "in eighteenthcentury
Jaipur miniatures, such as the painting
of a Lady arranging her Hair [280] and a large
cartoon for a wall-painting of Krishna in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 15