Shisha embroiderer Geetaben Meriya, from Gujarat’s Kutch region, helps participants at the TRC’s recent masterclass in shisha work. Photo by Shelley AndersonOne stitch, then another stitch....I wonder what this stitch is called? Somebody said a buttonhole stitch....oh, no, I’ve forgotten how many stitches I’ve done! These were some of the thoughts running through my head at the TRC’s masterclass in shisha, on 25th September.
Shisha is embroidering with mirrors, or the stitching of other shiny substances onto garments—clothes (especially clothing for women and girls), but also wall hangings and other decorations for the home. And for small cloth hammocks for babies, as we were shown in a slide presentation at the beginning of the masterclass, organised by the Amsterdam-based Textiel Factorij, which organises exchanges between Indian and Dutch crafts people.
Our teacher for the class, embroideress Geetaben Meriya, was involved with making the beautiful baby’s cradle. She’s been doing shisha embroidery since she was 14, and lives in the village of Sumrasar, in Gujarat’s Kutch region, in western India.
Embroidered sample of shisha work, Kutch, Gujarat, India. Early 21st century (TRC 2024.2876).
She leads a collective of 12 women who all do colourful shisha embroidery. She was a patient teacher, as all eight of us in the class discovered. We’d each received a bag with several differently shaped mirrors, a small pair of scissors, fabric, needle and floss; our task was to transform this into a brooch.
Master shisha embroiderer Geetaben Meriya explains how a small rock was used to grind powder, in order make paint to draw embroidery designs on fabric. Photo by Shelley AndersonI failed to complete a brooch and I enjoyed myself tremendously. I loved watching Geetaben as she kindly and repeatedly (well, repeatedly for me) showed the stitches the we needed to secure the small mirrors, in different sizes of circles, rectangles, and triangles, to our fabric.
Her choli (blouse) and long red skirt were decorated in shisha work, showing that this centuries-old technique was alive and well. I loved the companionable silence as the eight of us worked on our embroidery together, and the wonderful conversation around the lunch table. And I learned so much from the fascinating examples surrounding us in the TRC’s shisha exhibition.
No one knows exactly where shisha began. Reflective substances, beginning with flakes of mica, have been stitched to clothing, probably to ward off the evil eye and malignant spirits, for centuries throughout Central and South Asia and the Iranian Plateau.
Textile sisters: master shisha embroiderer Geetaben Meriya with Dr. Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, at the Textile Research Centre in Leiden. Photo by Shelley AndersonDuring India’s Mughal period (16th to 18th centuries) silvered glass started to be used, to be replaced in the latter half of the 20th century by metal and plastic foils. During the 1960s Western hippies, such as myself, discovered wonderful clothing decorated with tiny mirrors.
While I didn’t leave the workshop with a brooch, I did leave with a feeling of great satisfaction, much more knowledge, and a greater appreciation of older textile skills.
And did you know that European tastes were introduced into Kutch in the 18th century, by a man named Ram Singh Malam? He had been rescued from a shipwreck by Dutch sailors and lived in the Netherlands for 18 years before he returned home. I will impress my textile obsessed friends by repeating this small fact at parties! I could not ask for anything more.
By Shelley Anderson, 5 October 2024
The TRC’s exhibition “Shisha” , which features over 60 examples of garments, panels and other objects with shisha work, is on now until 19 December.
