A dedicated textile gallery namely “The Indian Textile And Costume Gallery, a permanent collection at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, returns to the museum after a 15-year hiatus. It is of particular significance to Mumbai city, whose contours were once defined by its textile mills.
With a rich background of textiles in our country, and a legacy referenced from Vedic times, the Textile Gallery draws its design inspiration from the nature of textiles itself; whilst it’s curatorial footprint is theme-based.
Using the warp and weft - the basic constituents of the weave, and the two most common practices in textiles - weaving and dyeing - a design vocabulary has been culled out that seeks as it informs.
Wrapped in a cocoon of black, the exhibits stand out on garment donned mannequins in floor-to-ceiling glass cases, lining either side of the gallery space, commanding one’s attention in a criss-cross fashion. Colours like red, purple, blue, yellow, green and pink (common colours used in dyeing) accentuate different sections of the exhibits.
