Sacred Darbar

The Story

The Ram Darbar is the assembled court: Rama and Sita enthroned at the centre, Lakshmana with his bow, Bharata and Shatrughna in attendance, and Hanuman kneeling below with his palms joined, the devotee who needs no throne of his own. Sacred Darbar renders the full assembly across the largest canvas KURU has produced, but its real subject is the ground they stand on. The red field is written over, corner to corner, with the names राम and सीता repeated thousands of times in bead and thread. This is the practice of likhit japa, writing the name as a form of prayer, carried out until the surface itself has been recited into being. Nothing in the composition is background. Every inch of it is devotion, performed rather than depicted.

The work is built in dense contour beadwork over printed and hand-worked cotton: seed beads, bugle beads, sequins, mirrors and gold zari, laid in lines that follow every fold of cloth, every strand of jewellery, every halo and arch. Figures are outlined in gold and filled with pattern that changes register from body to garment to ornament, so at viewing distance the piece reads as a single burning red field and at close range it separates into hundreds of distinct passages. At this scale the surface holds an extraordinary quantity of handwork; it is the most demanding piece in the collection, and the one that most rewards standing close.

Sacred Darbar is part of KURU's Sacred Threads collection, created under the artistic direction of Shantnu Sihag, trained at Istituto Marangoni and Rubelli Venice. Each artwork is entirely hand-embroidered, and the intricacy of materials and technique means no two pieces can ever be truly identical. Every artwork carries its own character, impossible to replicate exactly by hand, and is accompanied by a signed Certificate of Authenticity.