A Woven Life: Enter asset subtitle if available

By Jenny Housego and Maya Mirchandani

Jenny Housego is a textile historian, designer and co-founder of Kashmir Loom. She has helped inspire a generation of Indian craftspersons to raise their skills to new heights of creativity and excellence. During her over three decades in India, she has ventured across the country to work with weavers and embroiderers to forge new ways of combining their traditional craftsmanship with contemporary designs. She also co-founded the successful brand Shades of India. Her work in Indian textiles added to India’s place on the world’s luxury map. Also active in numerous social projects in India, Jenny has not only revived ancient weaving techniques that had all-but disappeared, she also ensured the livelihoods of families from Haryana to Kashmir and West Bengal. She is the author of Tribal Rugs: An Introduction to the Weaving of the Tribes of Iran and of Bridal Durries of India. Jenny lives in Delhi and is often found at museums or brunching with her gang.

Maya Mirchandani is an award-winning Indian journalist with interests in Indian Foreign Policy, South Asia, and identity conflicts. She moved to research and teaching after over two decades with NDTV India. She teaches Media Studies at Ashoka University and is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. As a journalist, Maya survived a suicide bomb attack at President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s election rally in 1999; reported on 9/11 as the planes hit the World Trade Center in New York; survived pro-government mobs attacking the media during the Anti-Mubarak protests in Cairo, Egypt. From Moscow to Washington DC, Cairo to Islamabad, Freetown, Sierra Leone to Rangoon, and several places in between, Maya has traveled extensively, always in search of a good story to tell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Apr 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9788194295990

Book preview

Richly layered and remarkably candid, A Woven Life is anything but an ordinary memoir. Life-writing at its truthful and unapologetic best, this is the story of a textile historian, entrepreneur and collector with an eventful and adventurous life story. As a child in countryside England, Jenny Housego had thought she would grow up to be a spy, but life had other plans. Brought to the world of Asian textiles, art and museums, she has, over the last five decades, travelled across Asia with a passion to document traditional, local and nomadic weaves and handcrafted textiles. In collaboration with Maya Mirchandani, Housego lays bare her idyllic childhood in the aftermath of the second World War; her aspirations of being in the arts and then as a researcher at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the struggles of falling in and out of love and a broken marriage; of parenting; and her passion for Indian textiles, having established herself as one of the most successful British entrepreneurs working in India who co-founded the luxury brands Shades of India and Kashmir Loom.

A

WOVEN

LIFE

OTHER LOTUS TITLES

ROLI BOOKS

This digital edition published in 2020

First published in 2020 by

The Lotus Collection

An Imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd

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Copyright © Jenny Housego, 2020

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eISBN: 978-81-942959-9-0

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For Asaf

Who gives me the strength to carry on

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

PART ONE

Oranges and Powdered Eggs

Apples, Peaches and Berries

Judy Dench Won’t Ever Know this

In a Pink Empire Line Dress

From Tehran with Love

On a Stormy Dhow to Dubai

Carpets and Weavers without Borders

French Summers and Anatolian Carpets

PART TWO

Begum’s Dogs and the Punjabi Bride’s Trousseau

Kidnapped in Kashmir

The Shades of India Story

Kashmir Loom: Stepping out of Another’s Shadow

Tragedy as a Teacher

Epilogue

Foreword

IT WAS THE TEXTILE HISTORIAN LOTIKA VARADARAJAN, ALWAYS

linking like-minded crafty people together, who first told me about an Englishwoman called Jenny Housego, newly arrived in New Delhi. She invited me to a small get-together where Jenny was going to talk about her ongoing research on the Punja durries of Punjab and Haryana. (This eventually became Bridal Durries of India, the path-breaking book on durries, the pileless small floor coverings woven by women in north Indian villages for their trousseaus, which she and Ann Shankar wrote together.)

My Dastkar colleague, Bunny Page and I went over to the Housegos’ home on Sardar Patel Marg, and were suitably overcome by the magnificent collection of Persian and Central Asian tribal rugs, cushions and spreads that were everywhere. Hung on the walls, covering the floor, draped over sofas and chairs…. In the midst of all this, and the other amazing artworks and artefacts that filled every available space, was a sprightly little auburn-haired figure dressed in tawny oranges and leafy greens (her signature colours, as I learnt later).

As a little girl, I adored Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies series of picture books. I used to lose myself in the enchanting dreamlike watercolours of fairies perched on different flowering trees and bushes, dressed in matching fruit-, flower- and foliage-inspired clothes. Jenny reminded me so much of one of those elves – the autumnal Hawthorn Fairy or the Crab Apple Fairy. Even confined to a wheelchair as she is now, she still has that fey quality and that naughty yet innocent smile….

Anyway, we settled down to watch her slide presentation of the Punja durries’ documentation and out came the second side of Jenny! Behind the diffident, very British, understated, rather shy exterior was an insightful, academically trained mind; the scholarship coupled with a passionate excitement about her subject.

All these years later, I still remember Jenny’s illuminating exposition of ‘interlocking circles’ and how so many motifs and designs are based on combinations of this. After that I saw interlocking circles everywhere – on Etruscan mosaics, Celtic stone carving, Mughal jaali lattice work, Kutchi ajrakh block prints, rococo wrought iron, Indonesian wax resist batiks.

From that point, we became instant friends, sharing our travel and textile stories, meeting craftspeople together, poring over scraps of embroideries and block prints, endlessly discussing (over rather decadently large meals!) how age-old craft traditions could be adapted for today’s very different customers and lifestyles without losing their unique identity and meaning. When Jenny and her then husband David set up their export company, Shades of India, those discussions became the core of the company’s design philosophy. I think Jenny always regretted that the exigencies of bulk orders, export timelines and rigid quality control meant that it eventually become more cost-effective to teach the hand skills to women in the environs of Delhi rather than source materials and items from traditional craftspeople in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh or Banaskantha in Gujarat.

So it was natural when she left Shades to set up Kashmir Loom in Srinagar, that using local skills, local materials and local manpower was at the centre of her new, highly successful venture. As was the cutting-edge design: taking off from the traditional twill weaves, decorative butis and jaals characteristic of Kashmiri pashmina and kani weaving. The objective was quality rather than quantity; premium products for a discriminating premium customer, unique one-of-a-kind pieces rather than mass production.

Kashmir Loom was a role model for successful Indian craft development aimed at the international market, as Anokhi and Shyam Ahuja were in their time. Not only the products themselves, but the systems, the merchandising, the presentation, met international standards – there was no compromise. It was all the more remarkable as it all happened in the midst of the terrible insurgency and violence that overtook Kashmir in the last two decades of the twentieth century; at a time when bomb blasts and bandhs disrupted the Valley almost daily, and most international buyers and exporters had long stopped their orders. Kashmir Loom never allowed this to faze them. Perhaps its secret is that at its heart is an old-fashioned family enterprise, with affection, loyalty, trust and tradition as the fundament. Seeing Jenny surrounded by her Kashmiri staff and craftspeople is reminiscent of other nursery storybooks, a combination of Fairy Godmother and Mother Duck! Needless to say, her partner Asaf is also an integral part of this fairy tale, as he was in what came next.

A few years into this success story, Jenny was stricken by a terrible stroke. For some time it seemed she might never recover. But with that steely resolve that lies below her gentle exterior she willed herself to get better. With Asaf’s and the Kashmir family’s loving care, she worked at getting herself moving, talking, remembering, creating.... Today she whizzes about the world in her wheelchair – Paris, London, South America, Delhi and of course, Kashmir. There’s pain and frustration and an occasional blip, but she deals with this with a movingly matter-of-fact humour and honesty. Her grandchildren illuminate her life. And, whatever happens to her and Kashmir, the beautiful pashmina shawls and stoles from Kashmir Loom – strikingly original and contemporary, but still unmistakably part of Kashmir and its past – keep magically appearing.

All this and more is in this wonderful book: honest, introspective, engaging, original and funny – just like its author. Reading it, I’ve learnt about the bits of Jenny I did not know – the provenance of her black velvet jacket and flaming red hair; how John Singer Sargent came into her story; how Asaf and she first met. Jenny and I both shared formative years in Iran and I found out we have yet another thing in common. We both fainted on the first occasion we spoke in public! She in Sheffield, presenting her research on a Kerman carpet, I at a National Institute of Design Conference on Craft. Luckily, my fainting took place behind the stage curtain.

In the twenty-five years I’ve known her, I’ve seen Jenny remake her life thrice; each time amazingly and creatively different; each time with courage, panache and incredible style. I count myself lucky to be her friend.

Laila Tyabji

Founder Member and Chairperson,

DASTKAR Society for Crafts & Craftspeople

Delhi, 2020

Preface

‘THE SWALLOWS ARE FLYING LOW TONIGHT,’ SAID RAMZAN,

‘it’s going to rain.’ It had been a hot sunny day with a clear blue sky, but now dark black clouds were banking up on the horizon and a distant rumble of thunder could be heard. A ferocious wind started up, rocking the houseboat and creating little waves on the usually tranquil Dal Lake. Finally, the storm was upon us and the rain came lashing down while flashes of lightning alternated with deafening roars of thunder directly over the houseboat.

The next morning, I woke early and looked out of the window – the rain had stopped and the black clouds had rolled away. Instead, everything was silver in the dawn light, both the lake and the sky. The mountains were a clear beautiful purple. The first crescent of the sun could be seen, and as it rose, both the sky and lake turned a brilliant blue. Everything was bathed in bright sunshine as the whole sun rose higher and higher.

This was not my first visit to Kashmir. This time, even though the troubles continued, the Valley was very different from the war-torn place I had visited years ago on a holiday with my former husband David and son Kim – a short holiday that had extended into a living nightmare during those days of heightened conflict. I had come with a great degree of apprehension, but a greater amount of determination to see if it might be possible to work with the local people, craftsmen whose talent had fallen victim all these years to the violence. My friend Asaf had already provided me an entry into the Valley and its people. He was to be my partner in crime – a new venture – and a new beginning for me, created on the banks of the Dal, a long, long way from England.

The seeds for this venture had been sown many years earlier, when I was footloose and in my early twenties. I had managed to get a lowly position as an assistant in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. I had no academic degree, had barely passed two A-levels in English and French, and miserably failed in Russian twice. Then I had gone on to study Early Christian Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and fell in love with this subject. I still love it, to this day.

Life unfolds in mysterious ways. In the course of one of my earliest jobs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I was transferred to the textile department even though I had