Textiles & Garments- At the Jaipur Court

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About the Book This book is one in a series illustrating the collections of the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, City Palace Jaipur. Others in the series are Festivals at the Jaipur Court by Vibhuti Sachdev, and Arms and Armor at the Jaipur Court by Robert Elgood.

This is the first comprehensive overview of the court textiles of the Kachhwaha Rajput court of Amber-Jaipur, which were among the finest ever produced in India. While a few thousand historical pieces survive in the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum in the City Palace, Jaipur, many now reside in art collections across the world. Over 200 full color images showcase some of the most remarkable court textiles remaining in Jaipur and preserved elsewhere.

About the Author Rahul Jain is a textile designer and historian who lives and works in New Delhi. He runs a workshop of traditional Indian draw looms in Varanasi, which weave silk samite, lampas, and velvet textiles modelled on historical Indian, Iranian, and Ottoman silks. He has written and published extensively on historical and contemporary Indian textiles. His publications include Rapture: The Art of Indian Textiles, a survey of India's finest historical textiles; studies of the woven silks of Sultanate and Mughal India; and Handcrafted Indian Textiles: Tradition and Beyond. A Jameel Prize 3 nominee, he received the Padma Shri from the Government of India in 2015.

Foreword The Textiles Gallery in the Chy Place Museum has always been one of the most popular actions among visitors, and the vast stores of royal textiles and garments are the pride and joy of the Museum Over time sextiles become even more fragile than paintings many perish for they require great efforts to conserve them, so we are fortunate that so much has survived from the former collections of the Jaipur royal household. The garments, fabrics, and furnishings come from many diverse sources and are of varying types both ceremonial and everyday clothes for both men and women; made from cotton, silk and wool: woven, embroidered, and printed: from Varanasi, Gujarat, Bengal, Kashmir, as well as locally made in Jaipur. I am delighted that an international expers of the stature of Rahul Jain has agreed to write this book, covering a selection of the museum's holdings, together with some important pieces that have been dispersed to other museums around the world, thus giving us a glimpse of the extraordinary range and quality of the textiles that were once used at the Jaipur court.

This is the third book in a series that is intended to bring parts of the Museum's collections to wider audiences and to encourage scholarly study of them. With its beautiful illustrations and well informed text, I am sure that it will bring delight and understanding to many readers. I hope, also, that it brings fresh inspiration to Jaipur's renowned textile artisans and designers.

Introduction 1: recem decades, Jaipur has emerged as an iconic destination for all who are captivated by the beauty and hxury of India's historic courtly arts. The city offers an unparalleled range of textiles and objects that are handcrafted by traditional antisans and are inspired by the life and art of the medieval forms palaces and temples of the former princely state. Jaipur's block printed and tie-dyed fabrics, jeweled gold and silver, carved and inlaid stone, chased metal ware and glazed ceramics, are now so well-known that these epitomize, worldwide. Indian craftsmanship itself.

Jaipur's popularity as the capital of Indian craft stems from a strong revival of its artisanal skills and products in the late 20th century. This resurgence, spearheaded by visionary modern entrepreneurs. arts and designers, drew from a long history of development and flowering of the arts under the city's former Kachhwaha Rajpur rulers. Through the grand public arts projects of Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh 11 (1835-1880) and Maharaja Sawai Macho Singh 11 (r.1880-1922), the promotion of local artisanal kills and techniques can be traced back as far as the founding of the city in 1727. It is believed that the re-settlement of skilled artisans and an elaborate re-organization of court workshops were key programs of the city's founder-builder Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II (r. 1699-1743).

There is reason to believe, in fact, that the roots of this long process of artistic consolidation lay in an even earlier period of Kachhwaha rule. That phase spans the remarkable lives and careers of Raja Man Singh 1 (r.1589-1614) and Mirza Raja Jai Singh (r. 1621-1667). Both Raja Man Singh and Mirza Raja Jai Singh were leading luminaries and military commanders at the imperial Mughal court. They ruled from Amber, the older Kachhwaha capital near Jaipur. During their long military tenures in north, east and central India, they built numerous forts, palaces and temples, in addition to building extensively within their Amber dominions. During their reigns, the Kachhwaha treasury accumulated some of the finest and most spectacular Indian textiles and carpets, as well as other luxury objects, known to us today. While no doubt some of this material came in as honorific gifts and spoils of war, the archival evidence, such as that available for the royal Amber carpets, suggests that much may have been independently commissioned or purchased. The modern crafts of Jaipur contend, therefore, with the Kachhwahas' formidable material and artistic legacy.

The prestige of the Kachhwaha maharajas is perhaps more spectacularly reflected in the textiles used at their court than in any other decorative medium. The textiles and fragments that survived in the royal stores of Amber and Jaipur number several thousand pieces. These span more than 350 years of Indian craftsmanship: from around the late 16th to the mid-20th century. Of these, more than 2,700 textiles still survive in the collection of the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, housed in Jaipur's City Palace. The remainder, numbering in the many hundreds if not a few thousand, are now scattered in public and private collections across the world. Together, the two lots form the largest and finest group of court furnishings and apparel known to have belonged to an Indian royal house. In fact, it includes so many of the finest Indian textiles known in their respective techniques that the corpus poses significant, and unsettling, questions about the patronage, manufacture, ownership and use of courtly textiles in late medieval India.

**Contents and Sample Pages**