I.17. Colcha embroidered with yellow silk thread. ca. 1600. Attributed to Bengal. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, Inv. 2237 Tec. Photograph Courtesy of Direção-Geral do Património Cultural / Arquivo de Documentação Fotográfica. Photographer: José Pessoa.

      Figural arrangements embroidered on kantha and colcha also reveal compositional similarities despite the aesthetic difference arising from color, material, and thickness or ply of thread, stitch type, texture, and other choices. The figure of an elegantly attired man seated in a straight-backed chair, variously enjoying dance or musical performances and imbibing from hookahs or wine cups—ubiquitous in nineteenth-century kantha embroidery—for example, shares the basic compositional elements of the seated figure of the biblical king Solomon, who is usually presented at the center of larger colchas dispensing his wisdom and just rule (compare figures I.22 and I.23).⁹⁷ On these textiles created for European consumers, Solomon presides over the case, the baby offered to him by a soldier to determine which of the two women below was the mother. A similarly seated figure on Manadasundari’s kantha enjoys the company of dancers in colonial Bengal. Both seated figures engage with an attendant, extending an arm to receive an offered article. A second attendant stands behind the chair back, presumably also waiting on the seated figure. Kantha and colcha renditions often display an animal tucked in the space between the legs of the chair presented in profile. They also share a fondness for lavishly detailing furniture stitch by stitch. Other kantha versions display canopies overhead, not unlike the textile hanging above the seated Solomon (fig. I.24). Such shared elements suggest the possibility that older motifs were adapted for newer narrative purposes as these emerged to prominence. The interpretive choices to render the details including color and stitches differ significantly, thereby contributing to the coherence of distinct aesthetic sensibilities of kantha and colchas.

I.18. Indigo silk colcha featuring personifications of the five senses. Attributed to ca. 1680. Bengal. 284.5 × 218.4 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of the Friends of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1988-7-4.

I.19. Rectangular kantha with religious imagery and satirical vignettes about contemporary life. Attributed to late nineteenth century. Bengal. 165.1 × 102.2 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Stella Kramrisch, 1968-184-10.

I.20. Dappled deer and birds. Detail of colcha featuring personifications of the five senses (figure I.17). Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of the Friends of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1988-7-4.

I.21. Birds and animals framed in swirling vegetation. Detail of Hemchandra Dutt’s kantha. Attributed to second half of the nineteenth century. Bengal. Weaver Studio Collection (2011-09.0046).

I.22. Solomon with the Scales of Justice. Detail of colcha (figure I.17). ca. 1600. Attributed to Bengal. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, Inv. 2237 Tec. Photograph Courtesy of Direção-Geral do Património Cultural / Arquivo de Documentação Fotográfica. Photographer: José Pessoa.

      Such comparisons invite questions about the transmission processes whereby forms and motifs may have been handed down over the two hundred years that probably separated the making of these two textiles. Motifs such as King Solomon dispensing justice were probably introduced to Bengali embroiderers through printed or other portable versions, particularly if the textiles were commissioned through a complex network of traders connecting Lisbon and other Iberian port towns to production centers in Hooghly and Satgaon in Bengal. These innovative compositions likely gained extensive circulation through embroideries and line drawings on cloth, and the enduring processes of bodily memory acquired in acts of repeated drawing and stitching and intergenerational transmissions from one set of hands and eyes to another. In such transmission processes inhere potential for playful variation. Not all versions of these seated males, for example, were visualized by designers familiar with rendering chairs in profile or figures seated in them.⁹⁸ While Manadasundari’s babu fills his seat comfortably, others sit rather ill at ease.⁹⁹ Some seem to lower themselves tentatively into the seat of straight-backed chairs, at some variance from the ambiance of leisure associated with a hookah in the hand (fig. I.24).¹⁰⁰

I.23. Seated babu with attendant, entertained by female dancers. Detail of Manadasundari’s kantha (figure I.14). Gurusaday Museum, Kolkata (GM 1481). Photograph courtesy of Shubhodeep Chanda.

I.24. Seated man with hookah, supported by an attendant. Detail of kantha. Attributed to second half of nineteenth century. Kolkata. Gurusaday Museum, Kolkata (GM 1575).

I.25. Peacock amid vine scrolls. Detail of colcha with red embroidery. Attributed to seventeenth century. Bengal. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, Inv. 4581.

      Interpretive choices involved in the execution of the same motif through stitch sizes, orientations, and the spaces between them also reveal similar approaches across kantha and colchas. Peacock plumage, for example, is constituted through the juxtaposition of discrete tail feathers, each composed of a single vane terminating in circles for the eye, with barbs spreading on either side. Individual feathers are then stacked adjacent to each other in rows, heeding the integrity of each feather rather than overlapping them, to fill the luxuriant tail stitch by stitch (compare figures I.25 and I.26). Within such parameters, variations abound, arising from each embroiderer’s choices for color, spacing, and ply, for example, resulting in significant differences in the overall aesthetic. The fundamental similarities in interpreting such motifs, however, suggest that ways of doing things and technical knowledge shared among embroiderers could have been handed down over the generations that separate the later colchas and the earliest kantha.

      As more colchas are examined and the variety in stitchwork is uncovered, greater similarities with kantha technique and style can be discerned than was previously appreciated when colchas were associated predominantly with monochromatic chain-stitch embroidery that was densely packed to fill a motif.¹⁰¹ Continuous, graceful lines in back and running stitch on some later colchas, for example, when used to outline figural forms and render border patterns, can create a linear aesthetic that resembles that of some kantha embroidery (figs. I.27, I.28). Such affinities are more noticeable when the stitchwork on colchas is not used to fill inside the

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