When I first met Brigitte Singh, she was a comparatively new bride in India and still a miniaturist, presenting the work she had done with Rajasthani painters at the house of a mutual friend in the British High Commission. Behind her diffident, charming, soft-voiced exterior, one could already sense what made her and her work so distinctive: uncompromising perfectionism; a feeling for colour, line and form; a burning passion for what she does; a respect for the craftspeople with whom she works. This was no dilettante ex-pat ‘passing time’ in picturesque India.
Bishwadeep Moitra’s Brigitte Singh: The Printress of the Mughal Garden is a visual biography of Brigitte and her work. Expectedly, it’s a joy to look at. Leafing through the sensitively shot, beautiful images of wondrous floral jaals and butis and stunning but subtly combined pinks, aquas and olive greens, set in Brigitte’s own home and workplace, is a sensory explosion. One almost worries that her work will be seized upon to be pilfered by all those countless wannabe Brigitte printers and designers who have made her ‘the most faked textile artist’ in the world.
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