Art and crafts – Page 2 – Judy and Valerie On the Road

Toledo

Toledo is a fascinating place to visit. A completely walled hill top city with windy narrow streets, beautiful stone houses and architecture from various influences. Before the expulsion of 1492 there was a large Jewish population here with ten synagogues. After the Jews departed these were taken over and made into churches. Two have been restored. One is now a museum for Sephardic Jewry and the other is an exquisitely beautiful building with rows of arches. Apart from just wandering around the streets we visited the two old synagogues, the El Greco museum, a tapestry museum and the cathedral. Here are some photos (click on a photo for an enlarged image)

Synagogue

Museum of Sephardic Jewry

El Greco museum

The museum was thought to have been El Greco’s house and some of the rooms have been furnished with furniture from that period in addition there is a large collection of El Greco’s paintings

Tapestry museum

This museum is connected to the cathedral and contains wall coverings and also garments worn by the priests.

Toledo Cathedral

Madrid

We stayed three nights in Madrid mainly to visit the museums.

We re-visited the Reina Sophia to see Picasso’s Guernica and a multitude of other modern artists including Salvador Dali, Georges Braque and Madrid-born Juan Gris. The Prado gave us the Spanish painters – Goya, Velazquez, Ribera and El Greco gets included), and then we went to the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum for the first time. What a collection! Here are a few photos.

Dali- Dream caused by the flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Waking up

If you are going to visit these galleries and you’re over 65 take your passport as you’ll get in half price.

We stayed in the Osuna campsite which had mixed reviews but we found it absolutely fine and positively leafy.

We got the metro into town very easily.

And of course not to forget the Sunday morning market

Fortunately for us it continued until 3pm .

Jodhpur- Chandaleo Garh

at Jodhpur we stayed slightly outside the town at Chandaleo Garh which Mary had told me about. The estate has been in the family of Pranduman Singh for generations and in 1997 he turned it into a hotel. But it’s rather different to other places and was our favourite accommodation of the whole trip. It’s very simple, peaceful and beautiful.

In addition he has established a craft centre where women from the village can develop new skills and earn an income.

The evening meal was held on the rooftop and we were lucky enough to see the blood blue moon which was an amazing sight

Mr Singh took us out in his jeep to visit the weaver and on the way we saw camels and a blue antelope.

Jodhpur Tie and Dye workshop

Whilst in Jodhpur we went to a Tie and Dye workshop at ‘Isha Silk’ run by Ishwar Dewani on the rooftop of his house. Neither of us knew what to expect and our only experience was back in the 60s.

So this is pretty different to those T-shirts back in the day. Ishwar first described the process he uses for his professional dying and then took us through a simplified version.

We were each give a square of silk folded over 4 times and tacked along 3 sides. We put blobs of dye in a number of places making sure it went all the way through.

Then we wound thread several times creating small knots in the centre of each blob. The material under the thread will retain the dye colour.

The material was then placed in a bleach solution so that it went completely white, rinsed, and then placed in a dye. It was rinsed again, dried in the sun, and then we removed the knots. Hey presto!

Weaver near Jodhpur

The owner of Chandeleo Garh took us out in his jeep to visit two weavers in nearby Akthali village who weave dhurries (rugs) using camel wool. The journey itself was wonderful seeing gazelle and antelope and then the visit was fascinating.

The weavers whom we’d seen in other villages used treadle looms, but Bhiyaram and Heera jointly used a hand loom which they had made from tree trunks. Their work was very interesting and we ended up asking them to make us a rug for our home in London, using the same design and colours as the one in progress but a different size. Money was exchanged and the rug will be ready in three days – very exciting!!

Jaisalmer Prabhu handicraft

Wandering through the streets inside the fort we were stopped by Bobby, who had a handicraft shop where she sells products produced by rural women, and who turned out to be an ardent feminist. She was very vociferous about wanting to empower women and for women not to have to be confined to their traditional roles. We asked her what her husband thought about this and she said he was unhappy about it to start with but now was ok. She has two daughters and is bringing them up to be like her, but had received a lot of criticism from her family. She’s studying for a BA at the university.

Block printing workshop in Barmer

On the way to Jaisalmer we stopped at Barmer to attend a block printing workshop run for us by a small textile printing company called Panihari.

This was very exciting as one of the workers first showed us the process and then we were each given a metre of cloth and helped to create our own prints. We each just used two different blocks one for the edge and one for the centre, but they would use several wooden blocks to create a detailed pattern with several colours (see the Anokhi post). The solution we pressed onto the material was made of lime and gum. This will act as a ‘resist’ so that when the material is dyed the patterned sections will remain white.

They will dye our prints with indigo and send them on to us in Jaisalmer … watch this space.

Hand weaving in Raisar

On our way to Bikaner we stopped in a village and went into the home of a family who generate their own wool, yarn and fabrics.

They take the wool from their sheep and camels, spin this into yarn, dye it, weave it on hand looms creating fabrics, and then create products such as shawls. They then sell these to the local cooperative who are then able to sell it on.

Evidently Bikaner is the largest wool producing area in Asia.

They also made us some millet roti which are eaten there with s small curry- it was delicious.

Block printing – Bagru village

We visited a small block printing factory in a village called Bagru near Jaipur where they use a technique called Mud Resist.

Initially they create a paste made of of earth, water, wheat powder and gum A wooden block with a carved pattern is pressed into the paste and then onto white cotton material. Then sawdust is sprinkled on the top and print is left to dry.

The fabric is then dyed in cold dye- first in a solution to enable the dye to take, and then into the dye itself. In this case the dye was made from scraps of iron producing a grey colour.

The process can then be repeated pressing the mud resist solution onto the parts of the fabric which are to be kept at that dyed colour. The whole dying process is repeated as many times as required. Eventually the resist solution is washed off and the printed fabric remains

and of course they had a shop, and of course there was a natural progression

Anokhi museum of hand printing

You may have heard of Anokhi shops where they sell beautiful clothes using traditional Indian fabrics for contemporary designs. Well in Jaipur Anokhi have a very interesting museum of hand printing. It’s housed in a beautifully restored haveli and takes you through different printing techniques. They have a collection of fabrics and also have some people giving demonstrations of techniques. One man was doing block printing whilst another was making the wooden blocks used.