Drawing, from a series of drawings of craftspeople of northwest India, pencil, pen and wash on paper, John Lockwood Kipling, Amritsar 1870

Drawing of two men weaving a dari (or dhurrie), a tapestry woven rug where the warp, the length of the vertical strands are completely covered by the weft, the width of the horizonal strands. The man on the right is beating down the wefts to make the fabric compact. The weavers are convicts in Amristar jail.

John Lockwood Kipling (1837-1911) was born in Yorkshire and began his career as a designer and architectural sculptor. In the early 1860s, he joined the South Kensington Museum (as the V&A was then known) producing decoration for the new V&A buildings with terracotta architectural sculpture under the direction of Godfrey Sykes.

In 1865, Kipling left London for India and spent ten years in Bombay (now known as Mumbai) to teach at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art and became fascinated by Indian crafts. He was commissioned by the Indian Government to prepare a series of studies of crafts people and he visited the artisans in their workshops during a tour in 1870 that included Simla, Amritsar, Delhi and Lucknow.

In 1872 on a visit to Khamgaon in Berar he became fascinated by the process of cotton cultivation and produced a series of studies from life showing seeds being sown, filling gunny bags and farmers taking cotton to the market.

Kipling was a supporter of the Arts and Crafts movement in England which sought to re-establish the importance of good craftsmanship and design in the face of rapid industrialisation. His beliefs strongly influenced his teaching and when he was appointed Principal of the Mayo School of Art (today Pakistan’s National College of Arts) and curator of the adjoining museum in Lahore, he promoted the study of traditional crafts.

John Lockwood Kipling was the father of Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book and Kim.

Transferred from the India Museum in 1879. 1880 Register Entry: [ Room 8. On The Wall.] '0929. TWENTY-EIGHT FRAMES, glazed, each containing two sketches, by J. L. Kipling, of the School of Art, Bombay, illustrating the craftsmen of North-western India. 1 to 56'

John Lockwood Kipling (1837-1911) was born in Pickering, Yorkshire. His interest in art and design was aroused by a visit to the Great Exhibition of 1851 and he later became involved in the decoration of the Victoria and Albert Museum; he is depicted in a relief panel on the pediment of the Museum's Lecture Theatre. At the end of 1864, he was appointed Architectural Sculptor, one of three new posts for artist-craftsmen at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art and Industry in Bombay; he later became its Principal. In the following March he married and a few weeks later set off for a new life in India. In December 1865 his first son was born and christened Rudyard after the place in Staffordshire where his parents had first met. As well as teaching, Lockwood Kipling made decorative designs for buildings in Bombay and even designed the uniforms and decorations for Lord Lytton's Imperial Assemblage of 1877, at which Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. In 1875 he was appointed head of the new Mayo College of Arts in Lahore, where he promoted traditional Indian crafts, which had been declining in the face of cheap European imports. In 1870 Kipling had been commissioned by the government to tour the North-West Provinces and make a series of sketches of Indian craftsmen. This one was drawn in Amritsar Jail which was a major centre of carpet weaving in the region in the late 19th century, when the commercial carpet-weaving industry was in decline.

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