Jatin Handicrafts

Raju Rathi grew up in Barmer, in the far west of Rajasthan, among some of India’s richest textile traditions. He learned hand block printing from seasoned artisans, and in 2009 opened Jatin Handicraft in Pushkar — the town of the great camel fair, and a haven for anyone who hunts for textiles.

He doesn’t run a factory. Around a hundred women in the villages of Barmer — masters of patchwork, appliqué, hand embroidery and mirror work — take the work home, stitch it in their own time, and bring it back when it is done. Every piece carries the hand of the woman who made it.

Some of that work had almost stopped. The ralli — a quilt of cutwork appliqué and running stitch that came from Sindh with the families who settled near the border after 1971 — was no longer in demand. Raju found the women of Dhanau, a village 80 km from Barmer, who still make them, and gave them a reason to keep going.

Many of the women call themselves simply “labourers”. Raju calls them artists. He shares their names and their photographs alongside their quilts, so the people who buy them know exactly whose hands they came from.