Hansiba
All the products under the Hansiba label are hand embroidered and handcrafted. Named after Hansiba, SEWA’s first and senior-most artisan member who epitomizes everything that the organization stands for, the label showcases some of India’s timeless and classic embroidery skills. Every single Hansiba creation is painstakingly created by artisans whose families have been involved in the craft for many, many generations across centuries, often in the face of extremely harsh situations.
Hansiba Museum
The Hansiba Museum at Radhanpur is the first museum in Gujarat owned and managed exclusively by women artisans of SEWA in a bid to preserve their own art and craft.
The museum acts not only as a preservative repository of community knowledge of the craftswomen of Radhanpur, but also lends the women artisans and their communities with a sense of ownership and pride in their traditional skills.
In the face of growing industrialization in the region and changing aspirations of the new generation, these crafts are threatened with losing their identity. The sole purpose for setting up a community based museum by SEWA was to ensure adequate preservation of the visual repertoire and techniques of traditional embroidery arts.
The museum strives to – inspire the new generation of artisans and inculcate community values in them; and serve as a resource centre for researchers and designers alike. Various artefacts and exhibits of embroidery arts on textiles from different communities such as the Ahir, Rabari, Darbar and many others have been showcased here. Each of these communities has a niche style and language of motifs, which distinguishes one from the other.
