A strange — misguided — shadow falls between art and craft practices, with the latter being seen as an inferior means of mass-producing ornamentation that is devoid of intellectual merit. The ‘white cube’ of the gallery, then, rarely has place for craft. Moreover, while all crafts are seen as secondary to art, some are more so than others — for instance, the kumor who creates the sara is believed to be less of an artist than the patua who paints.

It is, therefore, heartening that the designer and researcher, Archi Banerjee, sought to highlight craft traditions in her exhibition, Parted Crafts, which was held at ICCR recently in association with the University of the Arts London, Mead Fellowships, and the Kolkata Partition Museum Trust. Banerjee’s quest went deeper than merely exploring the crafts of kumors, tnaatis, shnakharis, malakars and so on. She explored the history of Partition and how craft practices unite the two sides of a sundered nation. The seemingly sparse display yielded the richness of this history as well as anecdotes that would take hours to unpack. Take, for instance, the story of the proverbial shnakher karat (picture) — an intimidatingly large saw that is used to cut shnakhas or conch-shell bangles worn by married Bengali women. The blade of this instrument had saved the lives of the shnakharis fleeing the riots in East Bengal after the Partition. And in their new homeland, this very instrument became a means to eke out a livelihood and led to the birth of North Calcutta’s shnakhari para.

Be it the minute patterns etched on shnakhas, the life story woven into the anchal of a delicate Tangail saree, or the exquisite Benarasis woven by migrants from Mirpur who were outcasts in West Bengal and had learnt weaving these drapes from Muslim craftsmen, exhibit after exhibit belied the ‘inferiority’ of these craft practices. Who but an artist would be able to produce the intricate sholapiths and sital patis that Banerjee showcased?