Ben Cartwright
Ben is a writer & curator. He won a place on the Escalator Talent Development Scheme, National Centre for Writing, Norwich, with his first novel, 2021-2022. His non-fiction appears in a wide range of places. He has authored and co-authored numerous books on art and culture in India. He is currently editing a manuscript following his journey in the footsteps of the first British painter to send views back from among the Himalayas, a book that is much about life in the mountains today, as it is about the messy past. Ben's art and culture journalism appears in international titles, like The World of Interiors. Poetry in magazines like Arete.
As a curator, Ben is on the committee of Artspace in Cromer, which aims to engage and inspire the community with all aspects of public art. He is helping to curate the Autumn Festival exhibition, Now, Then, and What Next? in Artspace's recently restored art deco gallery on the seafront promenade. Working in partnership with The National Gallery and grant funding bodies. There is a lot of rural poverty and barriers to access in North Norfolk. Ben hopes that Artspace can show people that art is not big or scary, and that creativity is a crucial tool in wellbeing and self-expression.
Ben runs writing workshops, recent themes have included responding to artworks and exploring character.
Previously, Ben was the Collection Curator at The South Asia Collection Museum, where he designed exhibitions (online and physical), ran research projects in India, secured funding, worked with international partners, and created creative content as well as an extensive publication list. He also led student outreach in collaboration with UEA and NUA, and gave numerous talks and tour to different community groups.
Address: The South Asia Collection
The Old Skating Rink Gallery
34-36 Bethel Street
Norwich
Norfolk
NR2 1NR
United Kingdom
As a curator, Ben is on the committee of Artspace in Cromer, which aims to engage and inspire the community with all aspects of public art. He is helping to curate the Autumn Festival exhibition, Now, Then, and What Next? in Artspace's recently restored art deco gallery on the seafront promenade. Working in partnership with The National Gallery and grant funding bodies. There is a lot of rural poverty and barriers to access in North Norfolk. Ben hopes that Artspace can show people that art is not big or scary, and that creativity is a crucial tool in wellbeing and self-expression.
Ben runs writing workshops, recent themes have included responding to artworks and exploring character.
Previously, Ben was the Collection Curator at The South Asia Collection Museum, where he designed exhibitions (online and physical), ran research projects in India, secured funding, worked with international partners, and created creative content as well as an extensive publication list. He also led student outreach in collaboration with UEA and NUA, and gave numerous talks and tour to different community groups.
Address: The South Asia Collection
The Old Skating Rink Gallery
34-36 Bethel Street
Norwich
Norfolk
NR2 1NR
United Kingdom
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Books by Ben Cartwright
In the Amar Mahal at the City Palace Museum in Udaipur, a visitor bends to get a closer look at a silver-clad sinhaasan (throne). The sunlight picks out little embossed flowers, and the visitor notices the armrests are formed from two silver growling lions.
In Vagad, the head of the family rolls over on his khaat (charpoy) and stretches out a hand. He touches a large wooden cabinet. Opening his eyes, he sees the ornately chiselled patterns of leaves and flowers. Only he knows how to open the secret compartments in this cabinet. This is a majju, and the suthar (carpenter) who made it designed it to function like a safe box.
Anaikya means ‘diversity’ and this book celebrates the diversity of vernacular furniture in Rajasthan, and in doing so, it celebrates different communities, environments, faiths, customs and lifestyles.
Vernacular furniture is the traditional everyday furniture made and used by many different communities throughout Gujarat. The Gujarati term Sahaj can mean either ‘inherent’ or ‘intrinsic’, and this book introduces the vernacular furniture that is inherent to, and still is made and used throughout Gujarat: whether that be a local household constructing a kothi (grain store) from mud; a kharadi (woodturner) crafting the lacquered frame of a parnu (cradle); or a suthar or mistri (carpenter creating the series of joints and complicated interlocking compartments in a majju (a large ornate hope chest on wheels, decorated with carved wooden grills or inset glazed ceramic tiles).
The vernacular furniture presented in Sahaj plays an important role in the tasks and rituals of everyday life in Gujarat, and in some cases, has done for centuries. Furniture items are presented in five use-based chapters: Aasan: seat; Manch: bed; Manjush: storage; Sapaat: surface; and Vastu: objects. Each furniture type is accompanied with detailed physical information (materials, construction methods, scaled drawings and exploded drawings made using 3D modelling software) and a more human story (location, contextual photographs, oral histories). Gujarat is a large and environmentally diverse state with a number of different communities and language groups; the vernacular furniture in Sahaj reflects this diversity.
Despite vernacular furniture’s important position in the material culture of Gujarat, there is a lack of accurate information on these items, which is linked to a wider absence of research. This book addresses some of the factors that have influenced changes in vernacular furniture use and manufacture from c.1900 to the present, reviews previous scholarship and ideas about this furniture across the twentieth century, and provides an in-depth overview of Gujarat, its landscapes and the communities that live there. This is the first study of its kind, and hopes to inspire future research.
The Vernacular Furniture of North-West India project is a collaboration between the Design Innovation and Craft Resource Center (DICRC), CEPT University and the South Asian Decorative Arts and Crafts Collection Trust (SADACC), UK. The result of Phase I: Gujarat is a twofold output - Vernacular Furniture of Gujarat: Catalogue is the accompanying publication to Sahaj: Vernacular Furniture of Gujarat. The catalogue presents, in detail, over 400 vernacular furniture pieces and objects from Gujarat. The items in the catalogue are classified under the same five broad categories as used in Sahaj. The subsequent phases for Vernacular Furniture of North-West India project, each involving fieldwork, documentation and research, are Phase II: Rajasthan and Phase III: Punjab and Haryana.
Sahaj: Vernacular Furniture of Gujarat is published by CEPT University Press.
Papers by Ben Cartwright
This study of textile production (spinning and weaving) in Atlantic Scotland (AD c.600-1400) is the first of its kind. It focuses on two major periods of social upheaval: 1) the Pictish-Viking Age transition - a little understood period of in-migration and the retention of local inhabitants, and 2) the Viking-Medieval period transition - a period of boom then bust in the Northern Isles resulting in the cessation of Shetland to the Norwegian crown (less is known about life at home in the Western Isles). How communities of islanders were made and re-made under such social stress is of considerable interest. It is argued that community is the relationship between people, practice (including tools) and location. A study of textile production (at the loom, in the fields, and wider ideas of how things should be done) is, therefore, a study in being an islander.
Object of the month by Ben Cartwright
In the Amar Mahal at the City Palace Museum in Udaipur, a visitor bends to get a closer look at a silver-clad sinhaasan (throne). The sunlight picks out little embossed flowers, and the visitor notices the armrests are formed from two silver growling lions.
In Vagad, the head of the family rolls over on his khaat (charpoy) and stretches out a hand. He touches a large wooden cabinet. Opening his eyes, he sees the ornately chiselled patterns of leaves and flowers. Only he knows how to open the secret compartments in this cabinet. This is a majju, and the suthar (carpenter) who made it designed it to function like a safe box.
Anaikya means ‘diversity’ and this book celebrates the diversity of vernacular furniture in Rajasthan, and in doing so, it celebrates different communities, environments, faiths, customs and lifestyles.
Vernacular furniture is the traditional everyday furniture made and used by many different communities throughout Gujarat. The Gujarati term Sahaj can mean either ‘inherent’ or ‘intrinsic’, and this book introduces the vernacular furniture that is inherent to, and still is made and used throughout Gujarat: whether that be a local household constructing a kothi (grain store) from mud; a kharadi (woodturner) crafting the lacquered frame of a parnu (cradle); or a suthar or mistri (carpenter creating the series of joints and complicated interlocking compartments in a majju (a large ornate hope chest on wheels, decorated with carved wooden grills or inset glazed ceramic tiles).
The vernacular furniture presented in Sahaj plays an important role in the tasks and rituals of everyday life in Gujarat, and in some cases, has done for centuries. Furniture items are presented in five use-based chapters: Aasan: seat; Manch: bed; Manjush: storage; Sapaat: surface; and Vastu: objects. Each furniture type is accompanied with detailed physical information (materials, construction methods, scaled drawings and exploded drawings made using 3D modelling software) and a more human story (location, contextual photographs, oral histories). Gujarat is a large and environmentally diverse state with a number of different communities and language groups; the vernacular furniture in Sahaj reflects this diversity.
Despite vernacular furniture’s important position in the material culture of Gujarat, there is a lack of accurate information on these items, which is linked to a wider absence of research. This book addresses some of the factors that have influenced changes in vernacular furniture use and manufacture from c.1900 to the present, reviews previous scholarship and ideas about this furniture across the twentieth century, and provides an in-depth overview of Gujarat, its landscapes and the communities that live there. This is the first study of its kind, and hopes to inspire future research.
The Vernacular Furniture of North-West India project is a collaboration between the Design Innovation and Craft Resource Center (DICRC), CEPT University and the South Asian Decorative Arts and Crafts Collection Trust (SADACC), UK. The result of Phase I: Gujarat is a twofold output - Vernacular Furniture of Gujarat: Catalogue is the accompanying publication to Sahaj: Vernacular Furniture of Gujarat. The catalogue presents, in detail, over 400 vernacular furniture pieces and objects from Gujarat. The items in the catalogue are classified under the same five broad categories as used in Sahaj. The subsequent phases for Vernacular Furniture of North-West India project, each involving fieldwork, documentation and research, are Phase II: Rajasthan and Phase III: Punjab and Haryana.
Sahaj: Vernacular Furniture of Gujarat is published by CEPT University Press.
This study of textile production (spinning and weaving) in Atlantic Scotland (AD c.600-1400) is the first of its kind. It focuses on two major periods of social upheaval: 1) the Pictish-Viking Age transition - a little understood period of in-migration and the retention of local inhabitants, and 2) the Viking-Medieval period transition - a period of boom then bust in the Northern Isles resulting in the cessation of Shetland to the Norwegian crown (less is known about life at home in the Western Isles). How communities of islanders were made and re-made under such social stress is of considerable interest. It is argued that community is the relationship between people, practice (including tools) and location. A study of textile production (at the loom, in the fields, and wider ideas of how things should be done) is, therefore, a study in being an islander.
and came to ‘understand’ their world as they picked up the embedded skill-set needed to clothe their families. Women armed with these ideas, stories, anecdotal maps of their surroundings, attitudes to everything from food and social etiquette, to slaving, raiding, sex and love were subject to movement in marriage, migration and slavery, bringing new understandings to areas and social groups. It is the intention of this paper to investigate this constant re-weaving of the self, and the changes induced by the social and physical environments on the daily practices of women in the Northern and Western Isles of Scotland, notably in textile production, and their affect on the ‘meanings’ they produced.