If Only ...I could add colour to the Taj Mahal
Says Ptolemy Mann.
I recently went to India to meet my rug weavers and while I was there visited Agra and the Taj Mahal. After days of seeing such intense colour that is so completely unique to India there was something exquisitely white about the Taj Mahal.
Although magnificent in its whiteness I would like to imagine being allowed to temporarily bring some of the magical colour of India on to the building by tiling the lower front wall with marble, delicately coloured tiles and draping sheer hand-woven silk from the balustrades.
The textile heritage and awe-inspiring craftsmanship inherent in India deserves to be celebrated. Indian people LOVE colour, textile and surface decoration and, indeed, even when they have little else they use colour in a fearless way. At dusk the Taj Mahal is flowing with Indian tourists, not Western tourists, and I feel they would very much enjoy to see colour and cloth around this building.
Ptolemy Mann
Ptolemy Mann is a textile artist who specialises in hand-dyed and woven architectural artworks.
Ptolemy Mann.Portrait: Alun Callender
She has been running her textile art and design studio since 1997. She is also an architecture colour consultant and has recently worked with Johnson Tiles as a consultant to re-colour its Prismatic range of tiles. ptolemymann.com
