Friday, August 26, 2011

FINGERS THAT MAKE MAGIC (bags designed for NANAN)

This project was begun with a small team of women from and around Rampurhat (Birbhum, West Bengal, India) who had earlier trained with Ferry (Foundation for Economic Rehabilitation for Rural Youth) in machine embroidery.
It was started off mainly with hand and machine embroidered stoles. Now the stole embroideries are done by the karigars who were affected by the recession and were out of work. New products have been added and NANAN has a bigger team since they found DESTINY FOUNDATION.
http://www.destinyreflection.org/
A very special consideration taken while choosing the fabric is that it also helps the hand loom weavers of Fulia (Nadia, West Bengal, India). This has been ensured by picking up most of their left-over stock of plain bases and then converting them into value-added usable products.
The idea behind starting a project like this is to make possible a livelihood with dignity for the artisans, and also to address the plight of the weavers, who at one time wove beautiful saris, but now weave for the soulless export industry. Owing to unavoidable hand weaving effects, they face a large number of cancellations.
Here at NANAN each design is decided after getting these cancelled lots. Each piece is planned exclusively with the hand embroiderers and other craftspeople. Fabrics are specially ordered only when the weaver is short of work from his regular sources and the looms are unwarped/ empty.

















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