The Voice of the Yarn (2023)

The Voice of the Yarn (2022)
Pramod Chavan
Casebound, glued, illustrated paper over boards, plain doublures. H325 x W235 mm. 66 pages. Acquired from the Artist, 20 May 2023.
Photos: Courtesy of the artist.

The technique of painting or printing by pulling a soaked string from a folded sheet of paper will be familiar to Western kindergarten and elementary school teachers. In India, the technique has been raised to an art form. The tradition of painting with rope, string or thread had its champion in the late B.K.S. Varma. Joining that tradition to the tradition of alphabet-inspired art is a new champion: Pramod Chavan.

Chavan calls his art “thread typography”. These process photos showing his manipulation of inked thread between folds of paper suggest that “thread calligraphy” might be just as apt. Whichever term, the results achieved — without direct sight of ink, tool and surface — are astonishing. It evokes the Punch cartoon of the kingfisher sitting on a branch and calculating in its speech bubble Snell’s law for entering the water to catch the fish swimming below the surface. Pramod Chavan must have a similar speech bubble filled with calculations for Bézier curves.

Between A and Z, The Voice of the Yarn lays out both the upper- and lower-case letters individually and the alphabet entire on double-page spreads like that above and below. The role of the fold in this technique is echoed in similar but very different ways by Jim Clinefelter’s A Rohrshach Alphabet (1999) and Étienne Pressager’s Mis-en-pli (2016).

The choice of background for photographing the double-page spreads makes a nod and smile to the usual floral images that arise when the technique is introduced for school — or after-school — art projects. Chavan’s thread typography springs from simple elements and opens into complex images — very much in the spirit of the alphabet itself.

Further Reading

“Abecedaries I (in progress)“. Books On Books Collection.

“Alphabets Alive! – Calligraphy & Design“. 19 July 2023. Books On Books.

“Carol DuBosch“. 25 February 2023. Books On Books Collection. If DuBosch recapitulates her Alphabet of Calligraphic Tricks (2014), perhaps she can persuade Chavan to contribute an ampersand!

“Jim Clinefelter“. 17 July 2020. Books On Books Collection.

“Cathryn Miller“. 1 September 2019. Books On Books Collection.

“Étienne Pressager“. 17 March 2022. Books On Books Collection.

Wigg ,Philip R., and Jean Hasselschwert. 2001. A Handbook of Arts and Crafts. Tenth ed. Boston: McGraw Hill.