Color Matters - Travels

The Colors of Tarogil Village, Pakistan

A Color Workshop for Textile Students
Beaconhouse National University - Lahore, Pakistan

Some history first: The earliest known example of cotton is the fragment found at Mehrgarh, Pakistan, one of the most important Neolithic (Stone Age/7000 B.C. – 3200 B.C. ) sites.
(Source: Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 29, Issue 12, December 2002, Pages 1393-1401)

Today, cotton textile production and apparel manufacturing are Pakistan's largest industries, accounting for about 70% of total export.

Consequently, it is quite significant that Beaconhouse National University has nurtured a Textiles Department. During my 4th week in Pakistan, I conducted a color workshop for these students.

The workshop included a field trip to the village - a small cluster of homes in the midst of the mustard fields that surrounds the Tarogil campus. The homes are primarily constructed of mud, mud-brick, and thatch. Unpaved streets and paths are filled with people dressed in traditional garb, donkey carts and buffalo carts (whose prototypes date back to the third millennium B.C.). No cars! A sense of timelessness . . . a step back to a time that most of us only see in movies. The visual landscape of Targogil village reminds us of that era in Pakistan that is the source of the earliest cotton fragment.

Tarogil Village Scene

The assignment required that the textile students note the colors in the village. In other words, get up close to whatever they encountered – whether it were the colors of the mustard fields surrounding the village or the materials and surfaces of objects and structures, such as the bricks and iron gates.

Student photographing the colors of the rocks

Boy and goat

Children at the gate to a home

Detail of a painted door

Mustard field surrounding the village

Students examining the colors of the earth and other objects

One of the main streets

Mud and straw building material

Tarogil boys playing in the field

Vegetation

Groceries in a cart

Brick wall, blue door, and villagers

Water buffalo and woman

A herd stampedes down the main street!

Donkey cart and fresh produce

Found in the field

Village area

Cooking tools

After compiling their color notations, each student selected three favorite colors and two least favorite colors for a composition based on the Bezold effect.

Example of the "Bezold Effect"

(Graphic from Color Logic, by Jill Morton) Three colored areas on each circular form remain the same. Only the color of the stripes on top of the 3 pie-shaped areas changes. In the example above, the stripes change from blue at the left to yellow on the right. The transformational effect is quite amazing given the limited palette.
$Students and faculty$
Assistant Professor Rohma Khan (far left), textile students, and Jill Morton (center) Examples of some of the "Bezold Effect" studies are on the wall behind the group.

Looms in the textile studio at Beaconhouse National University, Tarogil, Pakistan

Jill Morton, March 2009

Colors of Pakistan Pages

Table of Contents

The Colors of Pakistan

Color Symbolism Project

Cultural History as a Key to Color

The Colors of Political Protest

The Colors of Tarogil Village

Faces - Students and Teachers

Letters to America

Questions?

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