Shefalee vasudev biography

For new visitors and returning ones, trade textiles from the TAPI collection unlock India’s past as an aesthetic conglomerate. The current show at Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum reiterates their profundity

A day before the exhibition ‘When Indian Flowers Bloomed in Distant Lands’ from the TAPI collection formally opened at Ahmedabad’s Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum, I had the opportunity to visit, even as the final touches were being given to the notations and mounts.

The museum’s matriarch Jayshree Lalbhai’s generosity in accommodating my request (for logistic reasons), opened for me, in retrospect, a curative time.

Before elaborating on the “curative”, first the facts. Curated by Deepika Shah, director of the TAPI (Textiles and Art of the People of India) collection, the show focusses on ‘Masterworks of Trade Textiles’ from 1250-1950.

A total of 71 works in two categories—textiles traded to the East and those to the West are displayed here. They ech