Kala Cotton and the drylands of Kutch
Our research into fibres often begins by asking a simple question: why does this material exist here?
In Kutch, Gujarat, that question leads to Kala Cotton.
An indigenous cotton adapted to the region's dry conditions, Kala Cotton has developed within a landscape of limited rainfall, heat and challenging soils. Unlike the water-intensive image commonly associated with cotton cultivation, it has traditionally been grown as a rain-fed crop, relying largely on seasonal rainfall.
But understanding the fibre means looking beyond the plant.
It means looking at the people who grow it, the conditions they work within and the knowledge that allows cultivation to continue in this particular territory.
For us, this is where material research becomes inseparable from territory.
A fibre is never simply a fibre.
Its qualities are shaped before it reaches the spinner or the loom: by seed, soil, rainfall, climate and cultivation.
From the field, another sequence begins.
The cotton is harvested and prepared. Fibre becomes thread. Thread moves to the loom. Through spinning and weaving, agricultural matter gradually becomes textile.
Following this journey reveals how many different forms of knowledge are contained within something we eventually experience simply as cloth.
It also changes the way we think about design.
Instead of beginning with a predetermined object and searching for a material to produce it, our research moves in the opposite direction.
We begin with the territory.
We study the fibre.
We learn from the technique.
Then we consider the form.
Kala Cotton is one example of this way of looking.
Its significance lies not only in its physical properties, but in the relationships that surround it — between plant and climate, cultivation and knowledge, fibre and textile.
These relationships are what we look for when travelling through textile territories.
Not simply how something is made.
But why it exists there, what knowledge keeps it alive, and what it might become now.