Presented in collaboration with DakshinaChitra Museum and the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design (IICD), Jaipur, the exhibition features 20 sarees selected from a collection of 56 historic cotton sarees, estimated to be 80 to 120 years old.

For curator Bessie Cecil, the idea for the exhibition had been around for several years. “DakshinaChitra has an amazing collection of Chettinadu sarees. As a researcher, I came to know about it years ago. Indhumathi, who works at DakshinaChitra, was the one who told me about it and from then on, we would often say that we should do something with the collection,” Bessie says.

A few months ago, Bessie met Julie Wayne, a French connoisseur and scholar of Tamil crafts and textiles, who had donated some of the sarees to DakshinaChitra. That meeting brought the idea back into focus. “Indhumathi called me again and asked, 'Why don't we do an exhibition?' It was a very casual conversation, but that is how the whole idea came together,” recalls the curator.

The sarees may be made of a familiar material, cotton, but it is the way they use colour, pattern and weaving that gives them their distinct character. The title of the exhibition refers to three elements central to the Chettinadu textile vocabulary.

"Kodu refers to stripes, kattam to checks and korvai to the technique of joining the body and border of the sari through an interlocking weave. Chettinadu sarees are distinctive for their simple yet striking visual vocabulary of kodu, kattam and korvai. Traditionally woven in cotton, they reflect the aesthetic preferences, social practices and material culture of the Chettiar community,” says Prof Dr Toolika Gupta, Director of IICD.

“Their restrained colour palette, geometric patterns and bold borders demonstrate how visual richness was achieved through a relatively limited design vocabulary and skilled weaving practices,” she adds.

While these individual elements can be found in textiles from other regions, the combination of colours, patterns and weaving techniques gives Chettinadu sarees their own identity. They were also closely tied to the homes and lives of the Chettiar community, with sarees being carefully preserved and passed down through generations.

That history of preservation became an important part of the exhibition. The curators wanted to go beyond the sarees and document the memories attached to them.

“There isn't much written about these sarees. More importantly, we wanted to look at the collective knowledge, the people who are connected to them and their memories. It is a lived experience and that had to become an important part of the catalogue,” says Bessie.

As part of the research, Toolika interviewed Visalakshi Ramasamy, whose family has roots in the Chettiar community of Chettinadu. Her memories offer a glimpse into the community’s way of life and its relationship with sarees and textiles. “Visalakshi's perspective helped us understand the history and traditions of the community through personal memories. It also helped us place these stories in the larger textile history of the region,” says Toolika.