These cotton textile labels provide a glimpse of business history

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. There’s an uncanny resemblance between a work of art shown at Bengaluru’s Museum of Art & Photography last year and one at its current Ticket Tika Chaap: The Art of the Trademark in Indo-British Textile Trade. In the folio (part of last year’s Book of Gold show) from the luminous 17th century Kanchana Ramayana, fine miniatures with gold leaf, Garuda listens to Kaka Bhushundi.

In the current show, the same scene with all details of trees and birds is replicated but in a bright, printed chromolithograph at about a quarter of the size. While the one-of-its-kind folio was commissioned by the Benaras royal family, the copied, mass-produced version served as a textile trademark label for a British mill, slapped on to a bale of cloth exported to India. Tens of thousands of textile trademarks were registered in Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, each requiring a unique visual.

Much like today’s election symbols, objects like “ship", “radiator" and “aeroplane" were quickly snapped up as British factories turned out millions of yards of cloth for export around the world. Label artists in England had to look far and wide to create elaborate trademark stickers. Their inspiration came from Indian miniature art, contemporary American painting, Indian and Greek mythology, augmented by generous imagination.

On one label, in a bazaar setting, two elephants try unsuccessfully to rip apart a bale of cloth from Pudma Poplin even as regular business carries on. A Tata Sons label features an Athena-like figure on a chariot drawn by four tigers. These labels were stuck on the topmost layer of the bolt of cloth, usually 60-100 yards per bale, and were known as shipper’s tickets, textile marks