In the highest reaches of the Nilgiri plateau, in small settlements called munds set in montane grassland and Shola forest, live the Toda- one of South India's most ancient peoples, their lives woven around the rhythms of land and buffalo. Probably their most distinctive cultural tradition is an ancient embroidery practised by the Toda women. Around 1,500 Toda remain today. Fewer than 400 artisans continue to practise this art.
Pukhoor, their embroidery, is unlike almost anything else in the textile world. Usually worked in red and black on ivory cotton, entirely by hand- no guides, no sketches, no frames- threads counted purely by touch. The knowledge lives in the body, passed down through practice and presence. The geometry that emerges, reversible and almost impossibly consistent, looks at first glance like a weave. It is not. It is ancestry, made visible.
In a country that often associates richness with colour and abundance, this three-colour tradition has rarely received the gaze it deserves. It is one of the most distilled visual languages in Indian craft. Maximalism achieved through restraint.
This exhibition is the first showcase of a body of large-format Toda embroidered panels- some reinterpretations of historical forms, others new compositions developed collaboratively by the artisans and Coonoor & Co. The practice began with Ramya Reddy's book Soul of the Nilgiris, each of its 2,000 copies carrying a hand-embroidered Toda spine. What followed is a decade of collaboration, growing into a collective of nearly 70 artisans - women who embroider in their mountain hamlets, among trees and on verandahs, as they always have.
