How Queen Elizabeth’s face was kantha-stitched on a Royal Ascot saree

Rupa Khatun has no idea who the Queen of England is or was and hasn’t even seen her face. Yet, there is a connection. She is mighty pleased that a saree with her embroidery of the Queen’s face in kantha stitch has made it to England. She hoped the Queen might even see her work someday, but that was before Elizabeth II passed on. A thousand saree-clad women attended the Royal Ascot Ladies Day outing at the Queen’s favourite racecourse in Berkshire, England, on June 16 to celebrate an assortment of indigenous handicrafts in fabric from India. The saree Rupa had embroidered stood out for its Kolkata and London skylines, the Union Jack, Big Ben, the Tower of London, a red telephone booth --- all sewn into six yards of silk. But what it stood out for most was the Queen’s face, recreated impeccably in running stitch.In this two-part series, we will chronicle the lives and struggles of local artisans from West Bengal and Bihar, whose works in fabric shone at the Royal Ascot saree outing. Birbhum to BerkshireLet’s take you to Kulia village in West Bengal’s Birbhum district first, where 33-year-old Rupa Khatun lives. Birbhum… the land of red soil… has its wandering minstrels, the Bauls and fakirs, singing songs of glory, love and simple joys. And its womenfolk stitch that folklore in cloth, weaving history together.Rupa learnt kantha stitching skills by keenly observing the women in her maternal village ever since she was 12. The women encouraged her, saying it was sure to better her chances during marriage. But she had no formal training in the craft. She just picked it up along the way, with constant guidance from her mentor, SK Nurul Hoda, who is called Mukul by everybody in Kulia and the surrounding villages. It was Mukul who got her the order for the saree depicting the Queen. “Mukul da had brought this order to me, saying I have to embroider a saree with the Queen of England’s face in it,” Rupa says. “I said I haven’t seen her face before and I don’t even know of her. So how do I do it? Mukul Da said he is going to trace the entire thing out and also direct me on how to go about it. He also drew the Queen’s face on a stole, in the middle of their country’s flag. Even that has been taken to England.”Bringing out the subtle nuances of the Queen’s face was no mean feat…“The Queen’s locks contouring her face were the most difficult to stitch, especially the turnings,” Rupa says. But Rupa had Mukul to handhold her at each and every step. “The artisan will do exactly what you tell her to do,” he explains. “She cannot visualise the face on her own, she has to be directed on how to stitch a person’s face to give it perfect shape. We have to guide them almost at every turn of stitch. I literally sat with Rupa to tell her how to run her stitches so that the Queen’s hair falls gracefully on her face. This work had been commissioned from London and was urgent. We couldn’t afford to make mistakes. I told Rupa how to work at every step.”The saree was commissioned from Mukul by Tanima Dhar from London. Her retail brand Shri took the order from Dipti Jain, a UK-based doctor who is originally from Kolkata. The Royal Ascot in Sarees event was Dipti’s brainchild. It was an attempt to celebrate the creations by Indian weavers and highlight their post-Covid plight. But it was Tanima who came up with the idea of the Queen’s face in kantha. Tanima recounts how Dipti asked her if she could design a special saree for Ascot:“It was somewhere in the middle of last year when Dipti di asked me if I can design a special saree for her for Ascot,” she says. “The first thing that came to my mind is why not the Queen’s face on kantha. But we were not very sure because it’s a huge challenge to get someone’s face, and that too someone like Queen’s face, done exactly by a local folk artist, embroidered on a piece of fabric. So, I asked my team to see if they can draw and if they can embroider and to see how it looks. I sent them a Google image and what they did is simply amazing.”Dipti loved the sample stole with the Queen’s face on the Union Jack. They started working out what elements to incorporate in the saree. Dipti suggested the London Tower bridge along with the Queen’s face. Tanima said let’s have a little bit of everything that’s London --- the Buckingham Palace, the iconic red telephone booth, the London bus and, of course, the Union Jack, which is spread out all over the pallu. For the borders, Tanima suggested the Kolkata and London skylines to be put together in a symbolic bridging of the two cities that have so much shared history between them. Making the Queen sareeIt took Rupa four long months to complete the rather elaborate saree, and some more time to correct imperfections like the word London, which had been misspelt in the saree and had to be done all over again. The fabric was silk, not the usual cotton that is traditionally used for kantha stitch, making the process even more time-consuming. But Rupa persevered with her skill and dedication. She has no clue how prestigious the Royal Ascot outing is, or what cultural statement her saree made among a sea of dresses, skirts and top hats. All she knows is that she had been given a task and she did her best to deliver….Kantha has its origins in rags or tattered cloth, layered and sewn together in running stitch to serve as quilts and bedspreads, especially for newborns. The name is used for the running stitch as well as the finished product. It began as an exercise in frugality and resourcefulness by rural women in Bengal and Orissa, who stuck together old sarees and dhotis with the kantha stitch so they could be recycled as comforters and swaddles. But soon, they began to improvise and created patterns for embroidery, reusing old thread drawn out from the borders of these old sarees and dhotis. These patterns steadily turned into narratives depicting rural life, flora and fauna, social traditions, gods and goddesses as well as several other themes. The skill was passed on from generation to generation, as dowry among the poor and as part of the wedding trousseaus among the elite. Kantha shed its tatters for a more elaborate garb, moving on from quilts to sarees, duvets, kurtas, wraparounds, and even wall hangings and other home décor. Rupa herself has done a variety of kantha embroideries on different types of clothes…One particular saree she loved working on was themed on the now-criminalised practice of sati, a historical tradition that forced a widow to join her deceased husband on the funeral pyre. Rupa shares her experience while embroidering the saree, which was commissioned from Delhi: “They had traced all the panels telling the story of the Sati practice, which I knew nothing of. Before starting on the saree, I asked what it was about. Mukul da told me that long long ago, young girls used to be married off to old men. And when the men died, the wives were also thrown into the funeral pyres, to be burnt alive… “The fire burning furiously….the dead husband on the pyre….someone trying to push the child-wife into the fire…the flames raging on… all of this was stitched into the saree scene by scene.”The colours of threads to be used for each embroidery were carefully chosen by Mukul and explained in detail to Rupa, who carried out the instructions. Mukul knows tracing and embroidering equally well. He makes sure to trace out the elements of all the commissions he receives from across India and abroad, going from one artisan’s house to the other with the traced cloths. Most commissions require samples at first, and Mukul gets them done by these locals. Once the samples are approved, Mukul involves the artisans in the actual commissions. Steady encouragement from those who commission the orders is what helps Rupa stick to her craft braving all odds. Her husband wouldn’t let her sew at first, complaining that this was taking away time that could be used for the household….“Our financial condition wasn’t that good,” Rupa says. “We are still struggling. My husband was setting up his own business without much success, and couldn’t stand the sight of me stitching for orders, even though I got to work after finishing the household chores. You know how it is in the villages, how the husbands and mothers-in-law are. All five fingers are not the same, right? “Since his business didn’t take off, he’s always on a short fuse now,” Rupa adds. “You know how men are. I get scolded at the drop of a hat. If I retort, he beats me up. If Mukul Da comes with news that the didis have liked my work, he can’t say that in front of my husband. He didn’t like it at all at first, when I received all the phone calls after the saree got noticed.”“The other day, my husband got so angry when Mukul da called at 10 in the night to say that all the London ladies have appreciated my work. Why are they calling so late at night, he shouted. I got the beating of my life that day…” Rupa quickly redeemed her husband, though, insisting that ever since the Royal Ascot display got her media attention, her husband felt happy for her and even encouraged her to get more orders so she can become self-sufficient. For the saree with the Queen’s face, Rupa got a mere Rs 3,000, which barely helped pay the tuition fees for her two daughters, aged 8 and 10. Both Mukul and Rupa have the same refrain --- if they can get some institutional support, more people can be roped in, more orders carried out and more profits made. Mukul began getting proper orders right in the middle of the pandemic two years ago. He used to engage 20 odd women at first, but now he manages around 150-200 women across 12 villages in the area. In the next episode, we will take you to Bihar’s Darbhanga district, where two sisters are using Madhubani Art to conjure strong social messages in six yards, fighting chauvinism and suppression along the way.Anchor: Sanyam SharmaAudio Production: Prateek Kapoor