17 September 2025, Vera Anstey Room and Shaw Library, LSE
Textiles from Bengal contributed to British industrialisation and ideas of fashion worldwide, and this one-day event at LSE will celebrate that history.
The event will feature academic and curatoral talks, a book-launch, a display of historic Bengal textiles, a documentary screening and a hands-on workshop which will offer participants a tactile experience of the cotton, silk, jute, and dye traditions and through kantha embroidery focusing on its techniques of reuse and repair, and its role in preserving textile memory.
Jointly organised by LSE, UCL, and Weavers Studio Resource Centre (Kolkata, India), the workshop will bring together historians, textile scholars, designers, textile practitioners, museum curators, and producers (weavers, spinners, and embroiderers) in a discussion on how the past informs the work they do.
Places are strictly limited but, if you would like to attend the workshop, please complete this form and we will let you know by 5th September if you have been succesful.
Organisers: Tirthankar Roy (LSE) and Alka Raman (UCL)
Banner image @British Library
9.00am - Tea/coffee in Vera Anstey Room (VAR)
9.20am - Welcome: Tirthankar Roy and Alka Raman
9.30am - Introduction to Textiles in Bengal and book launch: Sonia Ashmore
10.00-11.30am: Session one
Rosemary Crill Kanthas and colchas: some early connections
John Styles Muslin as everyday fashion in eighteenth-century England
Karolina Hutkova Bengal silk, The East India Company and beyond
11.30am-noon - Tea/coffee
Noon-1.30pm: Session two
Meha Priyadarshini Writing new Global Histories with Indian textiles
Mary Schoeser Bengali perspectives: my 'unconscious' connections
Alka Raman Indian chintz and advances in European calico printing
1.30-2.30pm - lunch
2.30-3.30pm - Guided tour of exhibits by Subham China in Shaw Library (SL)
3.30-4.00pm: Weaver's Studio - design initiatives (talk by Darshan Shah)
4.00-4.30pm - Tea/coffee
4.30-5.00pm: Epaar Opaar: Shared Legacies (film)
5.00-5.15pm - Closing remarks: Alka Raman and Tirthankar Roy
6.00-7.00pm: Reception