Chapter 17: Decline, Revival, and Contemporary Practitioners

Twentieth-Century Decline

Like many hand-embroidery traditions across India, Kasuti saw a decline over the twentieth century as industrial textile production and machine embroidery became widely available and comparatively cheap, reducing both the economic incentive and the everyday domestic occasion to practise a slow, labour-intensive hand craft. Craft literature also notes a persistent challenge in attracting new, younger practitioners to the tradition, as its everyday cultural relevance has waned relative to mainstream fashion.

Government and Institutional Revival Efforts

Revival has come through several channels working in parallel. The Karnataka state government, through its Department of Social Welfare and bodies including the Karnataka Handicrafts Development Corporation, has established training centres — notably in Hubli — to teach and formalise Kasuti skills, giving women a structured platform to learn, practise, and sell their work, following the craft's recognition as a protected cultural asset. The 2005–2006 GI registration (Chapter 4) has functioned as both protective and promotional infrastructure for this revival.

Artisan Cooperatives and NGOs

Grassroots organisations have played a significant documented role. Craft-documentation sources describe women artisans organised into cooperative societies supported by bodies such as the regional Handicrafts Institute, Bhagini Samaj, and Janata Shikshana Samiti — reportedly sustaining a workforce of several hundred women embroiderers, broadly aged 18 to 55, across localities including Dharwad, Hubli, Kalghatgi, Gadag, and Mundargi. Separately, the IDF SHG Foundation identified Kasuti's decline at its place of origin and, working with the initiative Kaikrafts (active since 2010), mobilised interested women, trained them, and provided ongoing work — helping restore both livelihoods and the craft's visibility.

A further documented diversification initiative, Banjara Kasuti, has worked with women of the Lambani (Banjara) community — a distinct community with its own embroidery traditions — around Vijayapura, training and employing dozens of women on fixed, skill-graded wages while sourcing handwoven fabric from local weavers, an approach that links Kasuti's revival to wider goals of community self-sufficiency, education, and access to banking and healthcare services.

Independent teachers and craft bloggers have also played a role in keeping technique documentation alive and accessible, including detailed, freely available stitch tutorials from individual practitioners, and — more recently — online marketplaces and virtual workshops that let artisans reach buyers and students well beyond Karnataka.

Named Practitioners

Craft documentation names individual practitioners whose long careers illustrate the tradition's living continuity. Usha J. Pawar, based in Bengaluru, is a national-award-recognised Kasuti artist who first learned the craft from her mother and aunts before receiving formal training. Long-time Hubli-based practitioner Asha ben Savla has worked in the craft for around four decades and has produced a replica of a historic Chandrakali Ilkal saree. Embroidery teacher and practitioner Sujaya Mahesh, associated with the Sameeksha School of Embroidery in Bangalore, has produced notable contemporary Kasuti work, including a piece titled Ek-taar Chandrakali.

Designers and Contemporary Fashion

Kasuti has found renewed visibility through collaboration with contemporary Indian fashion designers. Designer Gaurang Shah, known more broadly for reviving and championing handloom weaving traditions such as Jamdani across multiple Indian states, has incorporated Kasuti embroidery into saree collections shown at national fashion events, helping bring the craft into contemporary couture and runway visibility. Kasuti's visibility has also reached national political and ceremonial occasions — for example, a saree reported to carry Kasuti-style work associated with the Artikraft initiative was worn at a Union Budget presentation in February 2023, a moment craft commentators cite as a notable instance of mainstream, high-visibility exposure for the tradition. As with any single, widely reported item, readers should treat the specific attribution as reported by craft journalism rather than independently verified by this book.

Exhibitions

Kasuti has also been featured in dedicated curatorial showcases of Karnataka's textile heritage. One documented example, "Pampa: Textiles of Karnataka," presented Kasuti embroidery alongside other regional textiles — including Ilkal, Mysore, Gajendragarh, Udupi, and Molakalmuru weaves, and Navalgund durries — as part of a broader effort to reconnect younger generations in these craft communities with their own textile heritage.

🖼️ IMAGE PLACEHOLDER — ARTISAN-PORTRAIT-01 Type: Photograph (portrait, permissioned) Content: A respectful, consented portrait of a practising Kasuti artisan at work, ideally taken in partnership with a named cooperative or training centre, with the subject's informed consent and correct name/credit obtained directly. Suggested size: 1200 × 1500 px (portrait) Format: JPG Caption: to be supplied with the artisan's name and cooperative/affiliation, confirmed directly with the subject. Alt text: to be written once the specific photograph and subject are confirmed. Sourcing note: Never use a scraped or stock photograph and caption it with a real named artisan without direct confirmation of both consent and identity.