A Beginning Within a Book
The name stitched into the spine of a book became the beginning of something much larger.
Sometime during the winter of 2016, in the midst of a multi-year writing project about the Nilgiris and the people who live here, the first spark of this project appeared. I was immersed in what would become Soul of the Nilgiris, a book shaped in no small part by the generosity and knowledge of the region’s indigenous communities.
From the beginning, it was important to me that these communities were not simply referenced or represented, but involved—especially in the creative process. Among them, the Toda community held a particular pull. I was drawn to the women’s extraordinary needlework, their quiet mastery of a geometric embroidery form that was as much a language as it was an aesthetic.
The indigenous communities that have lived in the hills for centuries played a crucial role in shaping my book, Soul of the Nilgiris. I made a deliberate effort to involve them in my creative process rather than just using them as a source of knowledge. Throughout my research, I interacted with the Toda community and was particularly fascinated by the work of the women artisans who practice the unique black and red embroidery.
During a brainstorming session with Cleber, my design collaborator in London, and Mutsin, a Toda elder I was deeply connected to, we explored ways to incorporate a stunning, handcrafted element into the book's design. After months of trial and error, we had our eureka moment with enthusiastic support from the Toda women and Mr. Venkat from Pragati Offset in Hyderabad (printers and binders).
The result was a completely new aesthetic: the GI-tagged Toda hand embroidery embellishing the spine of the limited edition publication that represented the most significant work of my life. This event was more than just a unique binding; it was a breakthrough for all of us. It signified the moment when these traditionally bound artisans bravely stepped beyond the comfortable and conventional moulds of their art form.
In Memory of Mutsin
"This was not preservation for its own sake—it was a shared decision to look forward."
The decision to use Toda embroidery in Soul of the Nilgiris was not simply an aesthetic one. It marked a shift. It was the first time the women artisans had extended their work beyond the traditional garments and ritual textiles of their community, and into something unfamiliar.
This was made possible by Mutsin.
A woman of remarkable substance and clarity, she believed in the possibility of new futures. Toward the end of her life, I had long, searching conversations with her and her daughter-in-law, Seeta (now the head of our artisan group), about what it might mean to open the form while still protecting its essence. She believed that her community’s art needed to be seen differently and seen again, that its survival would depend not on preservation alone but on the courage to evolve.
Mutsin passed away in October 2019. She didn’t live to see this next chapter unfold, but her vision is everywhere in it. The work we do today, with a growing group of Toda women artisans, remains inseparable from her belief in it.
“…She believed that her community’s art needed to be seen differently, and seen again.”
The Work Begins Again
It would be two more years—during the second wave of Covid—before Seeta and I began to work together again in earnest. We started with questions of cloth.
Traditional embroidery was done on coarse cotton, using acrylic threads. But to support the future of this practice, we needed to develop a base fabric that retained the visual rhythm of the old, while offering new tactility, strength, and possibility. Since the embroidery is done without a frame, and thread is counted entirely by hand, the weave had to be precise—responsive to fingers alone.
“We sampled endlessly.
We failed, often. But we stayed with the form.”
We sampled endlessly. We worked with weavers who understood what we needed, even if it meant going against established norms. And we worked with the artisans—not instructing, but inviting—offering every new sample not as a finished idea, but as a shared possibility.
Convincing the women to shift from familiar materials was not easy. It took time, and trust. But over months of dialogue, failure, and gradual success, the work began to take shape. A project that had started as a conversation during a book’s design had become its own form entirely: a collaborative, evolving studio committed to keeping Toda embroidery alive and responsive.
A Growing Collective
From a small collective of seven, we have now grown to nearly fifty artisans and designers working together. Each piece begins not with trends or seasonal calendars, but with the integrity of the form itself.
The designs honour the core principles of the craft: geometry, balance, and minimalism. The motifs, or pukhoor, are drawn from the natural world—honeycomb, seed, mountain, river—and are composed entirely by counting threads across warp and weft. There are no printed guides or templates; only the memory and logic of the hand are used.
“Every motif is counted thread by thread, without a stencil, without a frame—only memory and touch.”
We now work with finer fabrics, all sustainably sourced, that allow the embroidery to breathe in new ways—while staying true to the foundational structure of the art. Every product is the result of long dialogue, joint decisions, and mutual learning.
This is not a craft reinterpreted for the market. It is a collaboration, carefully shaped at each stage with the guidance of the women themselves.
“The Toda Project at Coonoor & Co is not a single product line or seasonal story…It is a collaboration shaped by care, integrity, and mutual respect.”
With fewer than 1,700 Todas and only around 500 artisans practising this embroidery, the work of preservation cannot be passive.
We are committed to fair wages, sustained engagement, and the creation of a space where new generations can enter the craft without having to choose between tradition and livelihood. Seeta now leads many of our new initiatives, and the women in our collective are training others. They are not just carrying a form forward; they are steadfastly reshaping its future.
The Toda Project at Coonoor & Co is not a single product line or seasonal story. It is an ongoing, living relationship—built on memory, mutual respect, and the promise of what can be made together.