Var mala exchange of garlands at Indian wedding (photo by k♥money on Creative Commons license)

Early notice of an exhibition of jewellery from the Asia Pacific region

The World Craft Council are hosting a conference in New Delhi, 4-6 February 2011. The event is titled Abhushan: Tradition & Design – Dialogues for the 21st Century. A key element in this event is a series of exhibitions surveying jewellery from different world regions.

For the Asia Pacific region, works will be gathered that respond to the theme of welcome, using the garland as a reference. These garlands are typically given to honoured guests and are either made of flowers or have a floral design.

At a time when there are tensions regarding global migration flows, it seems important that we sustain traditions of welcome. But given limited access to flowers, are there alternative materials that can be used? Also, can these otherwise ephemeral works be transformed into longer-lasting objects, such as jewellery, that can testify to bonds of friendship.

The Asia Pacific region has a rich set of traditions that bestow a garland or neck-wreath. These include:

• var mala ceremony in Indian weddings
• phuang malai Thai garland
• East Timorese tais
• salusalu welcome wreaths and leis from the Pacific
• selendang (welcome) in Indonesia
• medals in Australasia

The exhibition Welcome Signs: contemporary interpretations of traditional garlands will contain works that draw from such traditions for use today. At early this stage, expressions of interest are welcome. Please send them by 30 June 2010 to welcome@craftunbound.net.

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Older charm bracelets tell unique stories. On the verge of adulthood, the child is given a chain bracelet for the wrist. On the chain already are two or three intricate objects charged the meaning – a secret diary, a horseshoe for luck, a locket inscribed with the words ‘Travel time to happiness’ that opens to reveal a clock. Over the years, relatives returning from travels bring new component to fill out the bracelet  – an enamel ladybird, a turtle, a French horn and guitar…

It seems a to be world made to measure for a small person. It’s a way of inspecting the things of the world at close range. There’s also perhaps an element of magic involved, as though these were seeds for the eventual possession of real objects. But they are also public goods, that draw others into conversation – a magnet for the incidental praise that surrounds the world of a growing child.

This may well be a good time to return to the roots of the charm bracelet. The Italian cimaruta is an ancient charm that takes the form of a ‘sprig of rue’, at the end of which are a number of symbols, such as moon, fish, dagger and flower. The cimaruta is associated with the goddess Diana and often placed on the breasts of infants as protection, particularly against the evil eye. Without getting ‘neo pagan’ about such pre-modern symbols, the cimaruta offers an interesting model for jewellery as a form of symbolic value to be invested in the future.

So should the charm bracelet be revived? There is reason enough for their return as testaments to craft skills in gold and silver smithing. But as cultural artefact they can be seen as consumerist trainer wheels, preliminary to the eventual acquisition of domestic charm bracelet, featuring a Wedgewood dinner setting, Scandinavian furniture, French car and Milan coat.

The principle, however, seems inherently marvellous. The charm bracelet provides the armature around which a family circle can pin their hopes and support on an emerging adult. We were to keep this principle, what might be the charms for our time?

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Cheryl Adam is a recycle artist from Melbourne associated with the Philippine organisation Peace Women Partners (PWP). In her previous work, Cheryl collaborated with the Moro women from the Philippines’ Muslim population. For The World of Small Things, she is working in collaboration with a group of extremely poor homeless population from Manila, known as the ‘bat people’.

Plastic bags are a disheartening feature of impoverished landscapes. During a visit to Kenya in 2000, Cheryl was struck by the ubiquity of plastic bags, left hanging from trees after a recent drought. At the same time, he noted how these bags had replaced the grass baskets that used to be woven by local women. From this experience she determined to find a way that this problem could be addressed through a revival of craft skills.

Her involvement in the Philippines began with the visit to Australia by Merci L. Angeles for a feminist conference, which introduced the issue of ‘comfort women’ known as Malaya Lolas (meaning grandmothers in Filipino). Merci formed Peace Women Partners in 2005 and invited Cheryl to conduct workshops knitting shopping bags into boutique accessories. Working with the comfort women alerted Cheryl to the perils of rich-poor collaboration. These women were beginning to feel exploited by all the well-meaning art works organised by foreign artists in their name. From this experience, Cheryl has learned not to presume the interests of those she is working with. In 2006, she was invited by Moro women in Mindanao State University led by Elin Guro to a Women’s Solidarity Forum co-sponsored by the PWP. She ended up conducting successful workshops with Moro women.

After Cheryl’s departure from the Philippines, Filipino craftswoman Nanay Pida Nalundasan continued producing and teaching the craft for PWP, extending the idea into crocheting plastic flower broaches. The bags and flowers that were produced by Nanay Pida and her grandmother’s students were sold internationally. They became an important component of PWP campaigns, such as the commemoration of Hiroshima.

Sadly Nana Piday died, but PWP continues developing crafts among urban poor women of Metro Manila, namely the ‘bat people’. The houses of these families were demolished in an attempt to re-locate them to regions further out. The extremely long commuting times made it impossible for these families to continue their jobs, so they chose to camp under bridges, where they supplement their low wages with scavenging. A leader of the ‘bat people’, Liza Hermosada, made the flowers to draw attention to the plight of poor women in the Philippines.

According to Merci:

What better way to show that beautiful objects can metamorphose from the ugly, disregarded and disposable, than though the creation of functional crafts from trash. In a way, the poor people in our country are treated as such. The beautiful useful crafts created out of trash by Ms Adam and the urban poor women can give people a new way of looking at things and at life.

The flowers on display in World of Small Things have been made by the bat women especially for this exhibition. The reticule was made by Cheryl in honour of Nanay Pida. Cheryl has been invited back to Manila in September 2009 where she will take workshops with the bat women.

Plastic is a low status material associated with waste and pollution. With campaigns to reduce plastic bags in supermarkets, we generally like to see less of them. But can the persistence, labour and solidarity of Manila’s bat people give dignity to this material, so that we would be proud to adorn our lives with it?

• Photographs of Philippines by Patricia L. Angeles
• See article about upcoming PWP conference on global peace

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‘GupShup’ means chit chat in Urdu and Hindi. It was the title of an exhibition by Polly&me, a group working on an embroidery project involving women in Chitral, in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. The results of their workshops were displayed in Islamabad and Karachi, where half of the works were sold. The creative processes which produced these works were aligned closely with the grain of everyday existence. These simple pleasures of daily life shine brightly against the dark clouds of global tension associated with this corner of the world.

Polly&me was developed by Cath Braid, an Australian who originally started work in northern Pakistan with Kirsten Ainsworth as part of the clothing label Caravana, which featured in Smartworks. Cath has been working in Chitral since 2003. The town is in the north-west frontier of Pakistan, near Afghanistan, and lies nested within the mountain range of the Hindu Kush. Populated by the Kho people, fond of playing polo, the region is synonymous with fundamentalist terrorism in the Western mind.
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Cath has been working with the AKRSP (Aga Khan Rural Support Program) to assist women’s development. Her work in Chitral was assisted by Rolla Khadduri, a Lebanese woman, who has been working in Pakistan for four years. For Rolla, this project is ‘an opportunity to give women the space to tell their own stories’. Rolla worked with Cath
on running the workshops, probing the women about their stories, and recording their tales to appear at the back of each textile.

Cath has been working with 30 mostly unmarried women in particular. She begins with story-telling, dealing with everyday themes such as family life. They explore the graphic world around them, particularly in packaging of products from the market. Their creative exercises include making a collage of photographs of children. These them form the basis of the embroideries.

The subject of their embroideries included everyday play, such as Eikonchekek, the egg fighting game during Eid, the mother-daughter relationship and children’s names. At the same time as they explored freely their lives, these women were quite proud of their isolation (or protection) from the outside world through purdah.

Eikonchekek reflects the play during the feast of Eid when children go into battle with eggs. The story depicts a young boy who would boil his eggs so that they could withstand assault.

Games with Didi was created by Haseena, a 23 year-old unmarried woman. It depicts the riotous play between children, including Didi sitting in the tub usually reserved for washing dishes. Haseena talks about the experience of making this work:

During the workshops I used to go home with a certain joy in my heart from my work, I had become workaholic, and was not even aware of the time as we used to be so deeply involved in our work, it was fun, the practicality like practically first doing the task before going into the designing part was just wonderful.

Haseena particularly liked the exercise of drawing without looking at the paper. She was pleased to travel to Islamabad for the exhibition – ‘my childhood adventure was known to the world’ – and will be depositing money from the sale in a savings account with her bank.

The work Sultan the Sitar-Player depicts a famous musician who performs historic songs of political opposition in Farsi. He is accompanied by a jerry-can. It was created by Naseema, Shehria and Saba. From one of his songs:

People don’t know who I am mad after,
They don’t know what is in my heart,
Those who are in love know this pain,
Oh, queen of beauty,
I want your beauty’s charity,
Like a beggar I have come
For only I deserve your beauty’s charity,
Even my heart has stopped functioning.

Pot Swap was created by Zaibunissa, a mother of three. According to Zaibunissa:

Obviously it represents my house. I was so surprised to see my kitchen in the piece. My children helped me a lot on the piece and that gave a more personal touch to the piece as all my family got very emotionally attached with. That gave me very soothing and satisfying feelings.

This work was purchased by the Executive Director, The US Educational Foundation in Pakistan. Zaibun says that she will use the money to support her son’s education, ‘because for the admission of my son in a good college I’ll be needing that money as today’s inflation era people mostly hesitate in giving loan or lending money.’

Mehndi was created by nine women, including Musarat, a 13 year old girl. At the exhibition opening, Mehndi was interviewed by Aaj TV, which greatly impressed her family back in Chitral: ‘I had never before in my life faced a TV camera and they were saying that they felt really proud that among all the other girls I was chosen for an interview.’ Mehndi now wants to take on the role of Cath and Rolla and teach others herself, but according to her friend Nasreen, ‘in Chitrali Nang Kizibiko Lo, You have to come out of age for all this you are too young to even think of such a thing.’

Each textile work has its corresponding narrative sewn onto its back. To broaden involvement with the community, button pieces have been developed that women embroider with the names of male relatives and prayers. 250 women became involved in this.

Gup Shup is a landmark collaboration. Rather than seeking to preserve craft in its pure traditional form, this project introduces creative strategies to develop new images that seem true to the lives of their makers. But what seems most striking about his project is the sheer quality of the work itself, both in its craftsmanship and deft arrangement of ordinary elements.

This project seems quite transparent about the experience of the women it is meant to support. Apart for the creative challenges that they enjoyed, there seemed also benefits in the money and recognition that their work brings. But the meaning of this project is never complete. We watch with great interest to see how the women continue this momentum, and whether young girls like Musarat eventually start initiating project themselves.

Games with Didi and Sultan the Sitar Player will be on display with the World of Small Things exhibition. There will also be bags embroidered made by the women for sale in the Craft Victoria show. Proceeds from the work go directly to the women who made them.

For more information about the project, please visit their extensive website:

• www.pollyandme.com

Thanks to Ange Braid and Grace Cochrane for their assistance.

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Though you might lose the world around you, you still have your hands. The Palestinian refugees have been living in refugee camps for almost sixty years. Women maintain their culture partly through embroidery. Luckily, there’s an organisation that can assist in helping their work find a market. For a modest price, you can obtain not only a beautiful object of use, but also a message of survival.

Inaash was founded and registered in Lebanon since 1969 as a non-governmental organization by a devoted group of Lebanese and Palestinian ladies motivated by their deep concerns for the deprived families in the camps. Over the years Inaash has trained around 2000 women up to a professional level.

Inaash aims to preserve and promote traditional Palestinian embroidery, and create jobs for women in the camps thus helping them to be economically independent. The embroidered items are made by Palestinian refugee women who were expelled from Palestine after Israeli occupation of their country in 1948. They moved to Lebanon and settled in camps. Some of them knew how to embroider: as young daughters they grew up watching their mothers. Others were taught how to embroider by the Inaash art committee.

Embroidery is a traditional craft practice for Palestinians. Designs are passed on from mother to daughter, each generation changing a little and adding new inspirations. The repertoire is constantly changing and evolving. It varies from place to place in Palestine. Inspiration for patterns came from uniforms, creamies, printed fabrics, architectural motifs and nature.

Many names of designs come from village life and are symbols of certain concepts, such as eternity and wealth. There are more than 200 floral and geometric motifs passed on from one generation to another. Many objects were embroidered, including cushions, runners, dresses—some for daily wear and others for special occasions like weddings. Embroidery dresses are not only beautiful but also told stories. Women chose what statements their clothes should make. Some lavish embroidered dresses have over 200, 000 cross-stitches.

The art committee of Inaash prepares the design, colors and provides the ladies in the camps with the raw materials needed (canvas, threads, silk). Women are paid by piece, finish the product and sell it. Inaash is hoping to develop its program by cooperation with volunteer fashion designers to bring in new ideas and by expanding the marketing of its products.

The story of Samar, who embroidered the tea cosy for the World of Small Things:

My name is Samar. I am 50 years old. A mother for four children. I am from Java in Palestine. My family came to south of Lebanon after the Israeli occupied our country in 1948. My grandmother managed to save some of her beautiful traditional embroidered dresses and brought them with her. They were the most valuable things she ever had! I grew up in Rushdie camp watching my mother and her friends. Embroidering is an identity, it is our identity. It is part of my life not only to support my family financially but also feel proud participating in preserving our traditional heritage. In the afternoons, my kids study on their own and I socialize with my friends each having an item to embroider. If and only if those items can speak… they will tell you all the stories of the neighborhood!

I enjoy distributing colors and deciding what to put and where. It needs creativity. The most enjoyable moment is when I look at my finished lovely work! I do it with love that is why it is always wonderful! This tea cozy took me 120 hours (on average) I used DMC threads. My challenge for you is to count the number of cross-stitches! This tea cozy should only be enjoyed by people who appreciated hand work.

One of Samar’s tea cosies.

Thanks to Souad Amin for the material for this post. Souad works with the Association for the Development of Palestinian Camps (Inaash) where she develops products made by Palestinian refugees living in camps in southern Lebanon.

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What do you think is special about the craft produced in the Lautem district of East Timor?

The predominant craft medium we work with is traditional hand-woven cloth known as tais. All over the island of East Timor, tais are signifiers of ethnicity, and designs are specific to language groups. They contain motifs that are a symbolic dialogue of diverse cultural practices. Even when the motifs cannot be associated to culture, they usually represent something more than decoration. The women we work with live in remote communities in the south east corner of the island; in the flatlands of Los Palos and the densely forested highlands of Iliomar. Los Palos is home to the Fataluku people. Tais woven by weavers in this community utilise futus (ikat) dyeing methods to express their ancestral heritage. Fataluku tais are revered and valued highly in traditional exchange. In Iliomar, weavers from the Makalero people use a combination of floating warp techniques to create rows of a unique and dainty floral motif. Usually presented in white on red or brown back cloth, these motifs have their origins in colonial exchange with the Portuguese who first came to East Timor in the middle ages. Iliomar weavers also utilise futus dyeing methods, however the European inspired floral motif is unique to this area of East Timor. Fataluku tais are more valuable locally than the Iliomar tais as the relationship between these two communities are steeped in ancient pacts and power relations.

Learning about the anthropology of cloth consumption and how the consolidation of social relations and specific cultural values are expressed through tais has been an amazing learning journey for me personally. By the commercial application of the traditional skills used to create tais, the women we work with hope to safeguard their traditions while simultaneously easing the disadvantages of poverty; this area of this craft practice is extraordinary and presents great potential.

Do they need help? What kind and why?

Product design and quality control are two one of the many areas where artisans in East Timor need our assistance. As cloth is created for tradition rather than for markets, product should integrate and balance both the cultural distinctiveness of the cloth and commercial application of the women’s skills. ETWA works with the Cooperative for Tais and Cultural Development (CTCD), which has 86 female members drawn from three weaving collectives in Iliomar and Los Palos. These women come from the poorest and most disadvantaged families in the region; approximately 25% of female members were widowed during the Indonesian occupation, literacy is low and many members have limited access to farmlands. The coop is attempting to deal with the challenges presented by independence- and the challenges are many. The cost of everything is rising; imported cotton has risen by approximately 150% in the past twelve months. Many women are desperate for cash so they underprice their weavings and often they’re losing money as well as hours of back-breaking work. Clearly this is making them poorer, so it’s not surprising that paying for life’s necessities is a major challenge.

While income is generated through weaving tais and transforming it into soft fashion accessories such as bags, as one south-east Asia’s least developed countries, the design and quality of their finished product is low-grade. Developing international markets is vital as the domestic market for weavings is inadequate, however, until product design and quality improves, prospects for increasing market share are minimal. The back strap weaving technique also produces textiles that are as varied and unique as the women who produce them, so improving consistency of output is important. The imported cotton yarn available in East Timor is intended for commercial use and the colour range and quality are substandard. We are hoping that with assistance from the Australian design community, we can support the communities in Iliomar and Los Palos to begin growing high grade cotton locally and thereby replace the need for imported cotton. Through this process, we will increase local cash flows, improve product quality and help artisans to maintain their dyeing traditions as the colours of traditional tais are exquisite. As we take a holistic approach to our work, we are also looking to improve the women’s health and will undertake research in June this year. We’re excited about the possibilities this will open for the weavers.

Can they help us? Can you explain what Fulidai-dai is?

CTCD’s organisational model is based on the cultural notion of Fulidai-dai; a concept unique to the Makalero people of Iliomar. It is a set of cultural norms that govern relationships towards reciprocity, mutual exchange and collective support. The practice of Fulidai-dai encourages cooperation and puts the focus on supporting one another rather than encouraging individualism and competition. Through Fulidai-dai, groups work in reciprocity for the greater good of their community, such as working together in the fields, building houses, looking after children or caring for community members when they are sick. The notion of Fulidai-dai also encourages the passing on of wisdom, so when women share their knowledge of traditional arts with younger women, they are practicing Fulidai-dai; it ensures that cross-generational and cross- gender cooperation and sharing occurs.

By integrating the notion of Fulidai-dai which encourages collective decision making, common ownership, consultation and member participation, CTCD has developed a culturally appropriate business model. Unlike the state and privately-owned cooperatives that operated in East Timor during the Indonesian occupation, the principles of Fulidai-dai are similar to -yet run deeper than- the principles of International cooperatives.

In the west, many people feel we have lost the deep sense of connectedness and community that the people of East Timor share so there is much we can learn. Mutuality, cooperation, patience, loyalty and the essence of friendship are just a few of the ways of being that we can learn from the weavers in Iliomar. And of course the things we learn are equally as important as the gift of support we bring. Acknowledging Fulidai-dai as a legitimate and honourable practice rather than imposing a business model appropriate to our culture, is another way we can support the women to use cultural traditions to build new futures for their communities. If inclined, we can bring these notions back to Australia to help regenerate community here.

Where would you like to see the partnership between them and us continue in the future?

In East Timorese society, the practice of giving and exchanging helps to maintain harmony within communities. If we perceive our work with CTCD in this light, we acknowledge that we both give and receive and we recognize that when two cultures join together in recognition of what each can bring to the other, endless possibilities are created. We aim that our partnerships continue this way on a road towards empowerment for both the East Timorese women we work with and for our members and supporters in Australia. Our annual weaving tour is an example of this. The tour gives participants an opportunity to learn about traditional weaving and dyeing through a series of participatory workshops and East Timorese weavers receive an opportunity to express their craft.

On a more practical level, we aim to work with communities to build a central space for research, design, product development and training and a place of mutual exchange where the International design community can exchange skills with East Timorese artisans in Lautem. We recognize that what we as Australian women bring to the relationship is access to resources and to markets to help give CTCD members access to the things they need to improve their quality of life.

Deb Salvagno has a background in the rag trade and has a BA in Community Development. She has worked in East Timor since 2003 and is a volunteer with East Timor Women Australia.

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They’ve been some invigorating Melbourne-India exchanges lately.

The first occurred at the RMIT Design Research Institute on Friday during a discussion about the Code of Practice for Craft-Design Collaborations. We discussed the arrangement whereby the Touareg nomads were paid half a million dollars for the use of their name in a new model of Volkswagen. This worried a  worker in East Timor, who said that throwing a large sum of money at a community can sometimes cause more problems that it might solve. An Indian designer took a contrary view, not to say that it doesn’t cause problems, but to question why we assume that we are the ones who know to use money better – ‘If I had all that money, I’m sure I’d blow it all on stupid things too.’ Clearly there’s a lot more to be said on this subject, but we hope that there’s more open discussion like this.

Meanwhile, an alternative conversation with Indian craft was occurring at the culmination of the Crosshatched project, organised by Sandra Bowkett and Minhazz Majumdar. For Sandra, this is the fourth time she has brought Indian artisans to Melbourne. On this occasion she opened up new opportunities for collaboration. For Minhazz, she came to Australia with great curiosity, professing that Australia figured very little in the view most Indians had of the world, especially compared to the US and Britain.

Pradyumna Kumar and Anne Ferguson

Vipoo Srivalasa and Pushpa Kumari

Two of the artists represented the Madhubani folk art tradition of Bihar. Pradyumnar Kumar worked with Anne Ferguson on realising a three-dimensional version of a story that he had illustrated in a prize-winning book. In the story, a firefly witnesses the trials of a walking tree as it battles a raging fire. It seems a particularly poignant story given the recent history of bushfires in Victoria. Except in this case, it is only the fire of the kiln that can same this unfired tree from eventual destruction.

Vipoo Srivalasa worked with Pradyumna’s sister-in-law Pushpa, to again take her two dimensional drawings into the third-dimension, in vessel form. They took turns in creating the outline and interior textures of the cobalt drawings on ceramics.

Minhazz Majumdar watching Montu Chitrakar singing the Melbourne song

The scene at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Montu's Melbourne song

The third artist was a patachitra painter from Bengal. Chitrakars had been previously hosted during the Tramjatra project as an expression of tram solidarity between Calcutta and Melbourne. Montu Chitraka is part of the next generation of scroll artists. As part of his residency, Montu composed and painted a story of their journey to Melbourne, including the ‘highlight of my life’ in visiting the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The scroll was quickly acquired by the Australia-India Council, though he could have sold this many times over with the great interest it evoked.

So does this bring us any closer to Minhazz’ question about the role of Australia in Indian identity? We may well return the European concept of the antipodes, that constructed New Holland as a land where the natural order was upturned. A project like Crosshatched enabled these artists to try out different techniques, like moving into three dimensional works. Like the Bollywood film set in Melbourne, Salaam Namaste, Australia offers a space to explore new forms of Indianness. Whether this is a dilution or revival of Indian culture remains to be seen. At a person-to-person level, it certainly seems to have brought the two countries closer.

Perhaps one day we can think about reconstituting a new Gondwana, forest of the Gonds, by reuniting artists from lands in Latin America, Africa, Australasia, India and Middle East, who were once one land mass.

• Majumdar Minhazz ‘Folk art forms in India: Evolving a new paradigm’ in Craft Revival Trust

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Sculpture by Geraldine Fenn

The jewellery scene in South Africa has kept a very low profile. Perhaps here’s why.

Three jewellers from Johannesburg have an exhibition at Bell Roberts Gallery titled Tales from the Mantelpiece. Philippe Bousquet, originally an architect, works with family identity as a link between vintage objects. Geraldine Fenn, with a background in archeology and art history, works with trophies and glass domes. And Marchand van Tonder, a jeweller for 25 years, has created ‘Tales of Grimm’ that explore the dark side of fairy tales.

With such a taste for the miniature, clearly you have to look very hard to discover what jewellers are up to in South Africa. But it seems worth the effort.

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