Kalamkari Temple Hangings

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has the world’s most important collection of nineteenth-century temple hangings from South India.

They were commissioned by Hindu temples and monasteries (maths) and by individuals for religious use. They were produced by the kalamkari process of hand-drawing, mordant-dyeing and painting, a complex technique that reached its highest expression in South India.
The nineteen pieces in this book are all from the V&A collection. This is the first time they have been fully illustrated with complete translations of all their Telugu and Tamil inscriptions. Each piece is accompanied by a summary of the story it tells—whether a version of the Ramayana or an epic celebrating a local hero—as well as a detailed ‘frame-by-frame’ analysis of the narrative as it unfolds on the textile.
The majority of these pieces are from Coastal Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu, with one extraordinary Ramayana hanging included from Sri Lanka. All date from the 19th century except for one remarkable 20th-century hanging from Srikalahasti which depicts the life of Christ in the style of a traditional Hindu kalamkari. Bringing this group of hangings together for the first time gives the opportunity for a new look at the remarkable variety of regional styles in which they were made, and allows the work of some master craftsmen whose names are now known to us to be celebrated for the first time.