20/20 Project Blog 4: Hannah Sabapathy

My 20/20 residency at the Harris has focused on the textiles in the volumes of John Forbes Watson’s, The Textile Manufactures of India (1866). It would be hard to view these books and not think about colour.

During the nineteenth century red was and continued to be a significant colour. Turkey red textiles, often made in Scotland, were being exported not just to South Asia but globally. Turkey red dyeing was a laborious process using natural materials. It had arrived in Europe from the East Mediterranean and Asia, and eventually became obsolete in part because of the time-consuming process. The image below shows a Turkey red textile bought at the Peshawar fair in 1869.

Turkey red textile swatch, made in Europe, collected at the fair held in Peshawar, Pakistan, (South Asian archives V&A, 1869).

The National Archives contains volumes of textile designs that were registered to give manufacturers copyright protection. When looking at them there are pages and pages of Turkey red fabrics. You begin to get a sense of the scale of production and understand how important this colour was during this period. It is also worth considering that the use of colour in British registered designs generally appears much cruder than colours used in South Asian textiles.

Buchly and Company, Manchester, Lancashire, (Designs 402580-405322, National Archives, 1883).

The image below shows the diversity of designs created by British manufacturers that appropriate South Asian textile motifs. All of these registered designs were made by one company, Alexander Drew and Sons, Manchester and Lancashire. Were these textiles made for different markets? Were the red, black and yellow prints destined for India? We know the companies that registered the textiles, but not who they were intended for.

Alexander Drew and Sons, Manchester and Lower House, Near Burnley, Lancashire, (Designs 381886-408890, National Archives, 1883).

The textiles exported were varied and not only printed textiles. The image below shows a selection of broadcloth pieces from a European maker and probably includes new synthetic dyes. The label on the deep purple sample says mauve and this combined with the colour suggests it is an aniline dye.

Broadcloth swatches, made in Europe, collected at the fair held in Peshawar, Pakistan, (South Asian archives V&A, 1869).

For Forbes Watson, this was just one aspect of a larger project. To redress what he saw as the imbalance between the flow of money from Britain to India. He argues:

‘We know India now-a-days as a country whose Raw Products we largely receive. We pay for these partly in kind and partly in money; but India never buys from us what will repay our purchases from her, and the consequence is that we have always to send out the large difference in bullion, which never comes back to us, disappearing there as if it had been dropped into the ocean.’ p7.

He does not see the products that Britain is receiving, rather he describes the money evaporating. Also, when he states that the payment is ‘partly in kind’ what does this cover? There is a lot of ambiguity in this, are aspects of the cost of colonial infrastructure included in this? The relationship between India and Britain was complex, and the flow of goods and money is being reappraised as we interrogate the legacy of Britain’s colonial history. Textiles, patterns and dyes are all entangled in the process of colonial extraction and artists, curators and historians are all looking again at these complex interactions. The Forbes Watson volumes and companion text give us important insights into some of the opinions and feelings in Britain at the time.

20/20 Project

The 20/20 residency was launched in November 2021 by UAL Decolonising Arts Institute and with funding from Freelands Foundation, Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants Programme and UAL. The project will support 20 emerging ethnically diverse artists of colour to take up residencies with 20 public art collections across the country, leading to 20 new permanent acquisitions.

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