At first glance, the textiles in the ‘Threads that Bind’ exhibition look like art pieces meant for the wall—vivid surfaces of stitched colour and layered fabrics, with lines that seem almost painterly ...

The origin of Kantha is unknown but the art flourished in Bengal and Bangladesh over the last 500 years. Kolkata: The simple running stitch most of us learnt at school is making waves in Kolkata.

Nearly 100 years later, the “secret pain” that Bengali poet Jasimuddin wrote of in 1929 is still being stitched into nakshi kantha. This style of hand embroidery, traditionally on old saris, has been ...