In July 2013, after more than forty years of collecting textiles, I came across something that I had never seen before: a small paper label pasted inside a sample booklet that once belonged to a Calcutta fabric merchant. The brightly colored picture of a man and woman riding a white bull captivated me. What was the story behind it? Where had it been printed? And who were the two Indian figures it depicted—a blue man with a snake wound around his neck and the lady he so tenderly held? Charmed by its stylized simplicity and intriguing image, the collector in me began a quest that, thousands of labels later, continues to beckon.
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