Laila Tyabji has dedicated her life to reviving India’s craft heritage, working at multiple levels. Born in Delhi, she studied arts at the MS University, Baroda and, later, print-making at the Toshi Yoshida Studio in Japan. She started out as a freelance designer for textiles, graphics and theatre.
In 1976, Gujarat State Handloom and Handicrafts Development Corporation asked her to document, revive and redesign the traditional handicrafts of Kutch. Tyabji spent six months in the region, working with the crafts and craftspeople in the area—block printing, weaving, bandhini, woodwork, pottery, embroidery and appliqué.
In 1981, she and five others brainstormed an organisation for crafts and craftspeople. That was Dastkar. “I had no idea that we would still be at it 35 years later, and that it would become an all-India movement,” says Tyabji. It started with 15 nervous groups of craftspeople and today works with over 700 such groups. Dastkar provides support services such as entrepreneurship training, access to credit, product and skills development, design and marketing to traditional artisans, in an attempt to make handicrafts regain its place in the economic mainstream. She has edited a book entitled Threads & Voices:
Behind the Indian Textile Tradition, which tells the stories of artisan communities and the practice of different textile crafts. “In the micro sense, a lot has changed since we began.
Artisans are going places, and today they have the confidence to innovate and make sense of what works in the mainstream market. But in the macro sense, this is just a drop in the ocean,” she says. In 2003, Tyabji got the Aid to Artisans Preservation of Craft Award in New York, the first Asian to receive the honour. In 2012, she received the Padma Shri.