The Qalamkari Textiles of Golconda: Searching for Histories of Production, Patronage, and Place

2 Dec 2022

By 1700, the qalamkari textiles from Machilipatnam, the central port of the sultanate of Golconda, had gained renown from Delhi to London. Yet despite the recurrence in local and global archives of the cotton cloths from Machilipatnam, none of the many extant export textiles from this early modern period can be secularly attributed to this site of production. Moreover, because the patrons for qalamkari textiles included a wide range of individuals, from South Asian and British royalty to Japanese merchants and European householders, the styles of the cloths are stunningly diverse, displaying floral, figurative, and geometric ornament that makes it difficult to identify a characteristic repertoire. As such, we have a textual archive and material archive that it has not yet been possible to reunite.

Drawing upon sources ranging from popular poetry to royal inventory records, this talk details the search for evidence of artisan lives and modes of textile production; sources of patronage and paths of circulation; and argues for the importance of considering the built and natural environment of coastal Golconda in writing histories of the region’s qalamkari cloths.

View the video below.