Bill Stewart Award Recipients

Radha Pandey

www.radhapandey.com

Bio
Radha Pandey is a papermaker and letterpress printer. She earned her MFA in Book Arts from the University of Iowa Center for the Book. She specializes in Indo-Islamic Papermaking and teaches book arts classes in India, Europe and the US.
Her book Anatomia Botanica won the MICA Book Award in 2014 and received an Honorable Mention at the 15th Carl Hertzog Award for Excellence in Book Design. In 2018, her book Deep Time won the Joshua Heller Memorial Award.

Her books are held in over 80 collections internationally, including the Library of Congress and Yale University. Currently, Radha is working on an artist book inspired by Mughal floral portraiture from the 17th century, for which the paper is made in the traditional Indo-Islamic style.

Project Name: Flora of Mughal India

Project Summary:
Flora of Mughal India or Gulistaan-e-Hind ( گلستان ھند ), an artist book started in 2019, explores the shift in perception of nature and its representation in illuminated manuscripts in India during a time of cultural and political change (1500–1700), and how that consequently changed the art of the book and the visual representation of nature on the Indian subcontinent. A collaboration with master craftspeople in India, this book combines letterpress printing, miniature painting, paper cutting and hand-illustrated elements; in combination with text in three languages. The making of this book would not have been possible without the skill and artistry of my collaborators.

I have been working with four craftspeople based in India. Through this project, we have supported one another’s work and crafts practice. While in conversation with them, we all reflected the same thought: the pandemic caused such severe paucity of work that we all were simply scraping by. Commission projects have been few and far between and this is one project that has brought us all together: papermaker, paper cutter, gold leafer, miniature painter and book artist. Supporting other makers through this project is one of the main reasons I am applying for this grant. It would not only make this project finally take the final steps toward completion, but it will make it possible for me to pay my collaborators.