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Craft Education and Research
Center (CERC): History

 

history
courses
 kalamkari unit
 handloom weaving
 craft shop

  
              At a time of intense national               awareness, when people in India                    were seeking the neglected and                     forgotten treasures of the past,                      Rukmini Devi extended her                       interest in dance and music to the crafts which made each performance an aesthetic experience. Textiles were central to the costumes and backdrops of the dance drama she was creating. For the sought the weavers and dyers and the designs of traditional textiles. In September 1937, just one year after the college was opened, assisted by a grant from the government, Rukmini Devi set up a Weaving Centre with one loom in a thatched shed in the grounds of the Theosophical Society. It was part of her holistic and ambitious vision to preserve and revive a tradition that had withered under British rule. Broadly, that tradition was the South Indian aesthetic, reflected as much in the neat simplicity of her choreography for Bharata Natyam as it
was in the patterns of the saris produced at
the Weaving Centre she now had.

In the 1930s, Indian markets were being flooded by British textiles made in the
looms of Manchester. Many weavers lost
their jobs, and many others abandoned
older designs in favor of those catering to British tastes, with often bizarre results. Rukmini Devi's response to these trends
was direct. On 19 September 1937, V. V.
Giri, then Minister for Industies, inaugurated Kalakshetra's weaving centre, which would produce the designs which were disappearing. MORE >

 
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