Great News: Bilingual book on Odisha’s appliqué traditions launched

BY PAYAL BANERJEE

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 20: Odisha Craft Odyssey (OCO) launched Chandua: Canopies of Labour, a bilingual publication documenting Odisha’s living appliqué traditions and the communities and knowledge systems that sustain them, during the valedictory session of the OCO Symposium 2026 at the Odisha Research Centre (ORC) Auditorium here on Saturday.

The book was unveiled in the presence of Vishal Kumar Dev, Additional Chief Secretary, Energy and E&IT Departments, Government of Odisha, as Chief Guest, and designer and scenographer Rajeev Sethi, a Padma Bhushan awardee, as Guest of Honour.

Published by OCO, the book brings together fieldwork, archival research, visual documentation and artisanal biographies, examining appliqué beyond the finished craft object. It documents the terminology, materials, techniques, cultural contexts and changing practices associated with the tradition, while placing artisans and their knowledge at the centre of the narrative.

The 2026 edition, published in English and Odia, has been edited by Premjish Achari and Sibdas Sengupta. The research was undertaken under the OCO Fellowship Programme 2025-26 by Research Fellow Madhulika S. Naidu and Archivist Fellow Raj Maurya.

The publication is the outcome of nine months of research across 45 craft clusters, involving more than 255 artisans. The study records not only traditional forms and techniques but also working processes, knowledge transmission and the lived experiences of practitioners.

“With Chandua: Canopies of Labour, we wanted to look beyond the visual identity of appliqué and document the knowledge, labour and lived experiences that sustain the tradition,” said Sandeep Hota, Co-founder and Managing Director, BEADS, and Advisory Board Member, OCO.

Sengupta said the publication was an attempt to understand appliqué through its materials and techniques as well as the memories, histories and relationships surrounding them. The fieldwork showed Chandua as “a living practice” that continues to evolve, he said.

The day-long symposium, themed Mapping Transitions: Art, Craft, and the Ethnographic Turn, featured three panels involving artists, researchers, designers, curators and cultural practitioners. Discussions focused on local knowledge systems, the relationship between art, craft and anthropology, and the agency of artisans in adapting to changing contexts.

Chandua: Canopies of Labour is part of OCO’s long-term initiative to document Odisha’s craft ecosystems through fellowships, fieldwork, residencies, exhibitions, research and publications.