Slice of Mumbai hand craftsmanship at Vatican Apostolic Library
An exhibition titled Il Viaggio (En Route) commissioned by the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana features works by global artists as well as Indian craftspersons.
Artisans Abdul Hanif Jamader (40), Nisha Susvirkar (45) and Jyoti Kamble (26) have never travelled outside India and aren’t quite sure where Rome is. But from January 31, their intricate handiwork will be on display for a year at the exhibition hall of the Vatican Library.

Susvirkar and Kamble are among 150 craftspeople from the Chanakya ateliers, all part of the Mumbai-based Chanakya School of Craft and graduates of the Chanakya School of Craft, whose work — two hand-crafted globes and five maps, made of translucent layers of dried linen and hemp yarn overlaid with contemporary needlepoint stitches — form part of an exhibition titled Il Viaggio (En Route) commissioned by the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (or Vatican Apostolic Library).
Though the larger theme is to showcase aspects of travel across time and geographies through the span of human history, each individual work has specific references.
The first globe titled Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (The world is one family) showcases 88 distinct craft techniques as it rotates, featuring Tatreez (from the Middle East), Batik (from Southeast Asia), Zardozi, Phulkari, Zari, Kantha (from the Indian subcontinent), Shibori (from Japan), Xiang Xiu (from China) and Punto Antico (from Italy). The second globe, titled Antrik Vishwa, carries hand-stitched scenes depicting a site that is personal to nine of the women tailors from the Chanakya ateliers. Kamble, for instance, depicts a river from her village near Panhala in Kolhapur, which her family left as migrants when she was a baby. Susvirkar, born and raised in Mumbai, depicts a temple to signal her inner spiritual life. “Where we can’t go, our work goes,” Susvirkar said.
“The second globe is an ode to the women of our school, whose journeys look different from the ones we are accustomed to seeing. They may not have passports or venture beyond their local communities, but their inner journeys are deep and evocative, and we wanted to capture that. They have woven intimate portrayals of their homes, temples, and rivers,” said Swali.
The Vatican Apostolic Library commissioned works from Italian singer-songwriter Lorenzo Jovanotti Cherubini, Icelandic illustrator and graphic artist Kristjana Williams and creative director of the Dior womenswear Maria Grazia Chiuri, who collaborated with Karishma Swali, founder and creative director of the Mumbai-based Chanakya School of Craft, to produce textile-based artworks.
Also on display is an extensive periodical collection of Cesare Poma (1862–1932), an Italian diplomat, which even includes a copy of the Khalsa Gazette, a weekly newspaper in the local language published out of Lahore starting in 1886. Another section highlights the journey of French journalists Lucien Leroy and Henri Papillaud, who, between 1895 and 1897, financed their round-the-world trip by publishing and selling a serialized travel journal.
“This exhibition aligns with our mission to restore, catalogue, and digitize our collections,” Archbishop Angelo Vincenzo Zani, archivist and librarian of the Holy Roman Church, told a press gathering at the launch of the exhibition on January 31, the Vatican News website reported. En Route reflects the deeper meaning of pilgrimage in the Jubilee Year, the archbishop said. 2025 was declared the Jubilee Year by Pope Francis, an event that takes place every 25 years.
Chiuri and Swali’s collaboration also resulted in five hand-stitched maps that stand juxtaposed to the globes, as they depict the travels of six intrepid women from the 19th century who defied all odds and social expectations. Each map traces the routes navigated by six women: Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore (1861-1929) and Elizabeth Cochrane (better known by her pen-name Nellie Bly, 1864-1922) both of whom were journalists who were in a race to circumnavigate the globe; Annie (Londonderry) Cohen Kopchovsky (1870-1947), considered to be the first woman to go around the globe on a bicycle; Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), a British administrator who travelled to the Middle East and wrote prolifically about it; Agnes Smith Lewis (1843-1926) and Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1843–1920), identical twins from Scotland who were polymaths, biblical scholars and travelled to Sinai to recover old manuscripts.
The maps do more than showcase these journeys. For instance, Annie Kopchovsky decided to trade her corset for trousers, and one map delineates with a fine stitch the outline of the garment as a symbol of the sartorial journey that she made possible for women.
“En Route” was an opportunity to collaborate with Karishma Swali and the Chanakya School of Craft who visually reconstructed the cultural legacy of these six extraordinary women. The stories and trajectories of the travellers offer the possibility of tracing alternative routes and imaginary cartographies where garments, fabrics, and embroidery techniques are devices of geographical knowledge and identity construction. This project is a celebration of community work, which is the foundation of craft,” Chiuri said.
The Chanakya atelier also helped create three works — large-scale torans (wall hangings that are traditionally placed at the entrance of a house) — by Cherubini. In one, they hand-stitched depictions of musical notations from texts from the Vatican Apostolic Library archive. Master craftsmen like Jamedar, who worked on these creations, added ghungroos to signal the Indian tradition of dance and music. In another work, the names of the various places the Italian singer has travelled to have been hand-stitched.
Jamedar, who worked on the three torans (one of them 14 ft tall, the other two, 10 ft tall) said he had never tried anything like this before, and he was proud that he could carry forward his traditional craft of zardozi work in contemporary works like this. “I come from a small village near Calcutta. But the world is seeing my work,” the 40-year-old said.
Cherubini is also displaying a series of drawings traced on large geographical maps, as well as a sound installation.
The library houses historical documents that span philosophy, theology, law, art, natural sciences, music, and astronomy collected over centuries — all the commissioned artists were invited to engage with the collection and create their works. The Vatican houses an art collection that dates back to Greek sculptures and vases from the 5th century B.C. to more contemporary pieces such as of Henri Matisse. The collection extends across a range of artistic holdings within the Vatican, including the Basilica of St Peter’s and its Treasury, the Papal apartments, the Vatican Museums and the Apostolic Library. It forms one of the oldest unbroken collections that dates back to A.D 320, the founding of the church of St Peter’s.
In 2021, the Vatican Apostolic Library opened a public gallery and commissioned Italian artist Pietro Ruffo to create works themed around migration, and travel. A Vatican statement at the time contended that the work underlined “the difficulties and the beauty of the encounter between people of different origins.”