Colourful tapestry of motifs

A Voyage in Sri Lankan Design
Author: Tilak Samarawickrema
Vijitha Yapa Publishers
Reviewed by Chamara Sumanapala

The first thing which attracts a reader to Tilak Samarawickrema’s new autobiographical book “A Voyage in Sri Lankan Design” is its cover. It depicts a colourful tapestry design by Samarawickrema and executed by hand by the traditional weavers of Talagune, a village in picturesque upcountry region of Udu Dumbara. As the late French art critic and cultural philosopher Pierre Restani said in 1995, “The colours which Tilak uses are vibrant, but never overbearing or harsh. The warmth of his yellows, reds and oranges are always balanced by blacks and greys, by brilliant blues or beige and amber.”

Architect Samarawickrema’s art was a doodling habit which developed as a career of its own, nurtured by his 12-year-long ‘sogiorno’ in Italy. Although his foreign experiences added many dimensions to his work, they were all rooted in the Sri Lankan traditions.

The late Italian designer Bruno Munari wrote two decades ago that “Tilak is doing his work in his country, Sri Lanka, seeking the image of his land, the forms, the colours, and the traditional compositions, while searching for indigenous craftsmen who are aware of and attuned to these rules and techniques. With these elements, he recomposes a new imagery coherent with contemporary sensibility and new technology.”

Munari wrote the words five years after a milestone in Tilak Samarawickrema’s career, the “Silpa” exhibition in 1987.

“A Voyage in Sri Lankan Design” gives a detailed description of this event, which was a voyage in itself. Samarawickrema dedicates his book to the craftspeople of Sri Lanka and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Without them, the “Silpa” exhibition, and much of Samarawickrema’s career as an artist and designer would not have been a reality.

Coomaraswamy’s “Medieval Sinhalese Art” was the main guide and inspiration to Samarawickrema. In his own words, Coomaraswamy’s monumental work “continues to be the most important monograph on the island’s crafts, sixty five years after his death.”

Foreign experience

Samarawickrema discovered Ananda Coomaraswamy through Medieval Sinhalese Art in the late 1960s when he was “a hungry architectural student at the School of Architecture, Katubedda, Sri Lanka.” Through this work, Samarawickrema was attracted to traditional crafts of Sri Lanka.

Even during his stay in Italy, he continually nursed the thought of relating and transforming his foreign experience to his own country. This opportunity came when Samarawickrema was appointed Design Consultant at the National Design Centre of Sri Lanka on an ILO assignment in March 1986.

In his words, the “main objectives of our project centered on reviving the waning crafts traditions, sensitively modifying traditional designs to make them meaningful to contemporary markets and improving the technical quality of the products.”

He and his team scoured the island in search of traditional craftspeople and discovered many talented people. They include the potters Piyasili of Alawwa, E. Pubilis of Kelanipura and Dayasena Warusagama of Nittambuwa, master weaver Sirisena Yapage and the weavers of Talagune, the late G.G.L. Samanpura, a talented sculptor and rush mat weaver Lapaya from Henawala. Traditional knowledge and experience combined with Samarawickrema’s ideas created a successful exhibition. The photographs in Samarawickrema’s new book attests to Regi Siriwardena’s comment in the 1987 “silpa” catalogue: “there was not a single object that could be considered ugly or lacking in taste.”

Line drawings

Apart from talent spotting, Samarawickrema has utilised his own talents in many disciplines except his profession, architecture. He is a master of line drawings, which is a unique form of art inspired by Sinhalese alphabet and traditional art.

He has also extrapolated this talent to animation films. The book “A Voyage in Sri Lankan Design” gives a brief description of his earlier artwork such as the animated film “Andare” which represented the Oberhausen short film festival in 1978.

However, recent artwork is given prominence and the book also includes some photographs of his wire sculptures, another unique discipline also derived from his art. Samarawickrema utilised his unique art in a TV commercial for Munchee Biscuits to support the Sri Lankan cricketers in the recently concluded Twenty20 World Cup.

Samarawickrema’s art and designs have found its way overseas with his exhibitions in Italy and several other countries and consultancies in Guatemala in 1990 and Afghanistan in 2010.

Franco Mirenzi, a noted Italian architect and designer said “Tilak Samarawickrema’s art goes hand in hand with his architecture. Each searches for a common form of expression in an equal manner.” He said that “Tilak is a global designer.

The extent to which his work in art influences his architecture is worth looking into.” Mirenzi does not see a clear distinction between the two disciplines in Samarawickrema. One of the best examples of the interconnection of the two was the crèche/day care centre designed for UNICEF in 1984.

His paintings fill the empty spaces of the walls and proceeds from room to room creating a series of stories in visual architecture. His architecture has moved to the modern era with successes including the “Mihila” Green Factory for the Hirdaramani Group, which won the LEED Gold Award in 2008 and the National Energy Efficiency Award in 2010. It is the first carbon neutral apparel factory in Asia.

With many voyages in arts, crafts, architecture and many more disciplines, Tilak Samarawickrema’s “A Voyage in Sri Lankan Design” includes several voyages within its 264 pages. It signals to a bright future of many more voyages to come.