Karun ThakarIndian Textiles /ang

The catalogue exceeded all of my expectations. It is a beautiful volume with the luxury of several photographs of the same piece which almost compensates for the inability to do what you want to do most with textiles - touch them and feel them. The text is erudite and accessible and the whole production is a delight and a joyful encounter. A lectern would help!

I was very disappointed in this book, mainly because the majority of examples are from the Karun Thakar Collection, which appears to consist mainly of late period (nineteenth to twentieth century) specimens that are rather coarse and poorly realised. There are maybe a dozen pieces that are actually worthy of being in a “collection”, the rest being notable mainly for their huge size. Specimens in the catalogue that appear interesting turn out, almost invariably, to be from The Textile Museum or The Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection, which appear to have been inserted to beef up the rather random and poorly curated (if one can use this term here) selection that make up the Karun Thakar Collection.The three essays (based on the three sections of the book: Geometric, Floral, and Figurative patterns) are interesting, although I would have appreciated more organised, technical information on weaves and dyeing techniques from the earliest times onwards. Again, one notices that the examples used to illustrate the points in these essays are almost invariably from much better collections, whether this is the V&A, the Metropolitan Museum, the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, the al-Sabah collection etc., these pieces often being from much earlier periods or of much higher aesthetic and technical quality.The production quality of the book is superb, with one or two registers of enlargement of many of the examples, and very clear, sharp photographs. However, the arrangement of specimens in the catalogue appears to have no discernible structure, with a completely chaotic mix of periods, techniques, and imagery all jumbled together. This, along with the poor quality of the Karun Thankar specimens, means that one has to wade through great swathes of mediocre material. I would much have preferred them to have selected fifteen or twenty of the best pieces from the Thakar collection which could stand up to the Textile Museum and Cotsen Traces examples, so as to produce a much more compact and meaningful catalogue (and presumably, exhibition) that would have been far more enjoyable. As it is, although I considered keeping this book based on the twelve page essay from the figurative section with its marvellous illustrations, I, on balance, will return this book in order to avoid suffering through page after age of mediocre textiles.

The book was received in a brand new condition. Super useful for textile, history and art lovers.