‘un-paisley’

By: Saipranathi Sreeram Bachelor of Design - Silversmithing & Jewellery
The ‘un-paisley’ is a series of experimental objects working towards my degree show
collection. I use a shape India calls the ‘butta’, Scotland the ‘paisley’, and I, like my
mother, the ‘mango’ as I resonate with its immaterial sense of Narrative.
Through its popularity within craft and trade, as the Kashmiri shawl, the shape
provided the first seeds of the industry before and through India as a colony. And,
through its immoral journey to the west, rooted in imperialistic ideas of ownership,
within Scotland, the shape, appropriated as the ‘paisley’, was the touchstone of
domestic industries, providing many, especially women, with an opportunity at financial independence.
At the same time, whilst the western-world benefited from this motif, within India,
where the shape originated, the native industries were destroyed.
This shape aptly personifies the duality of the narratives within colonies and highlights the repercussions of colonialism in a so-called ‘post-colonial’ world.