Simon Marks Textiles | RESEARCH

Sikkim: Travelling to the foothills of the Himalayas to investigate the origins of madder, majeet, majistha, Che… Is it a root or a vine? I found the answer to be both.

In the depths of a fort palace armoury, engulfed by a sea of turban cloths from the past two centuries, Lehariya, Mothara, Medeel, Chunari, some, their colours still as bright and as vivid as the day they arrived in the palace. Some twinkling still with their applications of gold and silver dots. Some faded to a whisper of their former selves, still muted and beautiful, fine as gossamer. Rolls upon rolls upon rolls.

Thailand: East Surin. Going to the market to track down some lac – a hard resin, rolled into cigar-like shapes, mostly scuffed, broken and in crystalline pieces, but within holds the magical pink-red dye, the resin is made by the excretions of beetles, the colour from the beetles’ skin themselves.

A town in the north east of Khutchh, right on the fault line – the Allah Bund, its fort half tumbled by earthquakes, home still to one family who block prints with batik.

A small island off the Japanese Mainland, where traditional indigo is still harvested and processed over the winter to give that rich, intense blue. The master, who I met, could speak no English, nor could I speak any Japanese, but hands and eyes did the talking.

A goat in Ladakh...which part of it’s hair is really used to create shawls of gossamer fineness. There are so many stories. What does it actually look like, and what really is the yarn used? How is it processed? I found the answers to my questions in Leh, & met the Pasmina goat face to face ......maaaaaaaaaaa