by Avalon Fotheringham, Curator of South Asian Textiles & Dress at the V&A Museum.
The beauty of Indian muslin has captivated consumers for thousands of years. Woven of superfine hand-spun cotton thread, the best Indian muslins were so light and sheer that they were compared to ‘woven air’. To enhance the sheerness of these fabrics even further, Indian embroiderers embellished them with a form of whitework known as chikankari, or chikan-work. The finest chikankari embroiderers combined a variety of exquisitely worked stitches to create delicate motifs on which seem to float on their airy muslin ground.
While the origins of chikankari are as yet unknown, the finest surviving examples are typically attributed to Lucknow, a city in northern India. Home to one of the most dynamic fashion cultures in Indian history, Lucknow’s eighteenth and nineteenth century elite prized the technique as an expression of the refinement and elegance of Lucknawi culture. Chikankari is still practised in Lucknow today as a cherished tradition of the region.
Lucknow was not the only fashion capital to fall in love with chikankari. Over the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, East India Companies shipped Indian muslins to Europe and America, dramatically changing the landscape of western fashion. By the late seventeenth century, Indian muslins were replacing more expensive lace and fine linen accessories in European dress, and by the late eighteenth century it had become the most fashionable fabric of choice for dress-making. Among the most coveted varieties of Indian muslin worn in Europe were ‘flowered’ muslins embellished with whitework, the popularity of which saw European women take up muslin embroidery themselves.
It is uncertain whether the fragment of eighteenth century muslin which inspired Lucknawi Flower was originally embroidered in India to suit European tastes, or in Europe to emulate Indian styles. Over centuries of interaction Indian and European design frequently cross-pollinated, each region taking inspiration from the arts of the other. The design of the Soane fragment draws on both cultures, combining the beauty of Indian chikan embroidery with elements of British crewelwork embroidery.
The graceful arrangement of the fragment’s flowers in a lattice structure across the field suggests it may have originally formed part of a decorative mid-eighteenth century muslin apron, in line with elite women’s fashions of the era. Luxury muslin aprons can be found in hundreds of portraits of the era, their minutely embroidered patterns seeming to float over their wearers silk gowns below. Lucknawi Flower captures this delicacy, evoking chikankari’s magical ability to capture the heart.
