Linen Day, Roseau, Dominica - A Market Scene, by Agostino Brunias, c.1780. Yale Centre for British Art.
Connecting Threads: New Investigations into Madras Handkerchief Exchanges between South India and the Caribbean
Connecting Threads is an AHRC+NEH funded humanities project dedicated to exploring how Indian cotton weavers and their customers across the Global South impacted wider fashion histories. The project is now entering the second phase of its pilot case study, which focused on the South Indian ‘Madras Handkerchief’ and the impacts of its consumption in the Caribbean. This lecture will summarise the project’s findings, including new discoveries which shed light on the possible origins of Madras and the importance of the Caribbean market to global trade and fashion.
Avalon Fotheringham is curator for South Asian textiles and dress in the Asia department. She joined the V&A in 2014 as Research Assistant on the 2015 exhibition The Fabric of India, curated by Rosemary Crill and Divia Patel, and became a curator in 2016. She is speaking on behalf of the Connecting Threads project team, of which she is a co-investigator.