Description
About The Artisan::Santha Kantha Arts and Crafts was started by Chand Bhai and his wife Santa Begum in West Bengal. They began with only 10 women but now employ more than a 100 women who practice kantha embroidery. They produce beautiful stoles, dupattas, sarees, bed sheets, shawls etc in the typical hand stitched kantha embroidery style of the eastern states of India.
About the Craft: Kantha is a centuries-old tradition of stitching patchwork cloth from rags, which evolved from the thrift of rural women in the Bengali region of the sub-continent, today the eastern Indian states of West Bengal and Orissa, and Bangladesh. It generally refers specifically to the simple, straight, running stitch. Kanta was never commissioned by kings, nor ordered by the landed gentry, but passed down in learning and dowry from mother to daughter.