Weaving and Spinning (c. 1860): Art, History and Details

Weaving and Spinning (c. 1860) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Kehar Singh (Indian).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Hand-spun and woven cotton cloth was probably the most important commodity exported from India during the 1700s and 1800s. The British East India Company expanded to manage the business of textile production and international sale. The humble conditions under which Indian weavers and spinners worked are depicted here, where simple looms are made from crude branches, and the craftsmen work on the ground. The inscriptions at the top of the page indicate the artist’s name and the workers’ occupations.

Object facts

• Title: Weaving and Spinning
• Date: c. 1860
• Creator attribution: Kehar Singh (Indian)
• Culture: India, Punjab, probably Amritsar or Lahore, Company school, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and ink on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 23.7 x 19 cm (9 5/16 x 7 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1987.162

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William E. Ward

Further reading listed by the museum

• Czuma, Stanislaw J. Indian Art from the George P. Bickford Collection: Catalog. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.