DECCAN, INDIA, MID 18TH CENTURY

The Kalamkari technique involved applying dyes directly onto cloth. To European readers, the term might be most readily associated with the palampores and other textiles made for the Western market in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the entrepreneurial dyers of the Coromandel coast also adapted their products to suit the tastes of the Southeast Asian market. The movement of textiles from India to Sulawesi and Bali may have a long history: a remarkable textile in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (acc.no.1989.1325) was reportedly found in Sulawesi, and bears an old owner's stamp which may associate it with Raja Man Singh of Jaipur, which would suggest it was made in the 16th or 17th century (acc.no.1989.1325, Rahul Jain, Rapture: the Art of the Indian Textile, New Delhi, 2011, p.58, no.17).

Textiles associated with this cultural milieu were often narrative in content, drawing on the stories from Hindu mythology which were current across the Indian Ocean and beyond. A textile in the Calico Museum, Ahmedabad, for example, is almost three metres in length and depicts many scenes from the Ramayana together with Tamil inscriptions (John Irwin and Margaret Hall, Indian Painted and Printed Fabrics, Volume 1, Ahmedabad, 1971, p.70, no.60). A textile with an identical composition to the present lot is in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (acc.no.2016.42.2), and another is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (acc.no.IS.23-1996)