Swan. A popular motif in painting, craft and textile.

Printing from flat screens by hand.

Loom operated manually and not by a machine.

Cotton thread made locally using simple non-mechanical apparatus such as a spindle or a spinning-wheel.

Locally grown animal or plant fibres, usually cotton or silk, spun into yarn by hand, using a spindle or spinning- wheel.

North-Indian rigid neck band or choker that falls heavily on the collarbone.

In photogravure, the system in which the cells are of differing widths but of the same depth.

Silvery pigment used by craftmen of Sankheda, Gujarat for painting on wooden furniture.

A Persian/Arabic word referring to the decorative borders or outlines placed as boundary to the written text. In kantha needlework it is the outline formation of descending stitches.

Narrow patterned border of Kashmiri shawl.

Stone spice container with various compartments common in Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Hand-operated awl for embroidery. Same as ari but as it is used by hand it is generally called by this name.

Potters who do not use the wheel.

Crooked knee; name of a stitch pattern in Kanta embroidery.

Aristocratic residential building of a rich merchant or landlord in Gujarat and Rajasthan in western India.

A section of different pattern or certain design structures of Southeast Asian textiles.

An essential feature of a loom which produces shed openings, through which the weft threads are inserted during the weaving process. In Southeast Asia it usually consists of a wide rod (heddle rod) to which selected sets of warp threads are attached by loops of yarn. These loops of yarn are sometimes also known as heddles.

Additional rods used to select particular warp threads for the purpose of creating the pattern. They are also known as shed-sticks. A supplementary weft is inserted in the sheds they are used to create.

Term used for floss silk in western India.

Floss silk embroidery of the Thar desert.

To turn in and sew down the edge of a fabric.

Best fibres obtained from the wild marijuana plant. Cannabis sativa. See also bast fibre.

‘Migration’-the Muslim calendar is calculated from the date of the Prophet’s migration from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D. In English usage it is usually abbreviated to A.H., or Anoo Hijrae.

Himru can best be described as cotton and silk brocade where the extra silk weft, which is used for patterning, is thrown over the surface only where the actual pattern appears, the rest of the patterning thread being left to hang loosely beneath the surface of the fabric. Because of this, the material has to be lined and is ideally suited for winter. Himru thus differs from other mixed fabrics such as mashru, where the entire fabric is woven with the silk weft in a regular satin-weave.

Swing with broad comfortable seat.

The spring festival, celebrated with the throwing of coloured powder and water.

The hubble-hubble, a smoking pipe which draws tobacco fumes from leaves placed over a clay burning charcoal holder.

Contraption for smoking tobacco. It consists of a bowl, a long flexible tube and a base containing water that cools and filters the smoke.

A water-pipe, Rajasthan.

Pipe of the Nishi tribe from Arunachal Pradesh.