Claire SpiegelThe village of Ludiya erupts in color amid the monotonous earth tones of the Kutch region.“In scattered hamlets, weavers, embroiderers, textile painters, tie-dyers, bead workers, potters, carvers, cobblers and bell-makers work as they have for centuries, often taking weeks, even months to finish a single flawless piece,” Claire Spiegel wrote in The International Herald Tribune of the craftsmen of Kutch, in the northwestern state of Gujarat.
“It’s a dying art, almost extinct,” Sumar Daud Khatri from Nirona village told Ms. Spiegel about the 400-year-old tradition of elaborate freehand fabric painting called rogan art his family has
practiced for seven generations.
“The Sumar Khatri family is the last in the Kutch to practice the rogan fabric painting that locals bought for ceremonial clothing and special bed coverings,” she
wrote. But over the years locals have shifted to cheap machine-made textiles and Mr. Khatri finds customers among tourists who come to visit the grasslands of Kutch.
Mr. Spiegel described Kutch as “a haven of exquisite, age-old craftsmanship nourished by its distinctive ethnic mix and historic isolation,” but modern amenities have come to the region “after a devastating earthquake in 2001 brought economic assistance to the area and helped revive dying craftsmanship.”
Several local cooperatives and non-profit groups now market the region’s handicrafts to sophisticated urban markets in India and abroad but the path has been long and arduous, she wrote.
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