Chikankari Embroidery from India – As a child growing up in Lucknow in the 1960s, I recall being dragged along to the stores when my mother and aunts shopped. Much to my boredom. Except when we went to the chikankari shops. Even as a child, I found the gossamer tenderness and transparency of the craft fascinating, and I’m not alone in this. In 1903, George Watt described it as “the most artistic and delicate form of the indigenous needlework of India.” Laila Tyabji compares it to a dragonfly wing.
