Ticket, Tika, Chaap: Art, Trademarks and Branding in the Indo-British Textile Trade

Celebrate the launch of MAP’s latest exhibition Ticket Tika Chaap: The Art of the Trademark in Indo-British Textile Trade, and its accompanying book of the same name. The launch will be followed by a conversation between Shrey Maurya, curator and editor of the book, and Rucha Vibhute, Collection Manager at MAP. Shrey and Rucha worked together on a collection of close to 7000 textile labels and related ephemera housed at MAP. 

Ticket Tika Chaap examines the textile label, which circulated in the Indian subcontinent from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century. Called ‘textile ticket,’ tika, or chaap, and predominantly manufactured in England, these rich, glossy, multi-coloured labels were registered trademarks, and advertisements, that served instant brand recall in the marketplace. The book, and its accompanying exhibition, studies the textile ticket as a mirror of its times. As advertisements from a bygone era, these labels are also powerful reminders of the universal appeal of an image or an idea in a marketplace. 

Beginning with an essay by the cultural historian Dr. Sumathi Ramaswamy, and edited by Shrey Maurya and Nathaniel Gaskell, this book presents new insights on textile tickets, and examines how they stand at the confluence of the political, socio-cultural, commercial and artistic worlds of their time.