Don’t Miss India-An unusual photographic and textile narrative-chronicling the experiences of textile dealer Thomas Cole in India, will be on view at the San Francisco Tribal & Textile Art Show from February 18-21, 2016.

“Traveling to India in the last four of five years to do just one thing…See India, has been a revelation,” states Thomas Cole. “The idea behind ‘Don’t Miss India’ is to depict the wonder that was India after a mid 20th century historical work that is considered a seminal narrative of everything having to do with the people, their culture and the land.”

Don’t Miss INDIA! will present photographic works and textile arts. Spanning the entire subcontinent, the exhibition focuses on the everyday beauty of India. These visions of the exotic are the stuff of mundane daily life for most Indians. According to Cole, “Nothing is perfect and India, at the best of times, it is far from it.”

The San Francisco Tribal & Textile Arts Show is the only vetted exhibition of tribal art in the United States and is considered the top tribal art event in North America. The 2016 show will feature more than 80 top dealers in tribal and ethnographic arts from February 18-21, 2016 at the Fort Mason Center, Festival Pavilion.

The San Francisco Tribal & Textile Arts Show is being held in conjunction with The American Indian Art Show / Marin.

The San Francisco Tribal & Textile Arts Show will open with a 30th Anniversary Cocktail Party on Thursday, February 18th. Public hours are Friday-Sunday. ‘Top Picks’ Tours with Cathryn M. Cootner, Emerita Curator of Textiles, FAMSF will take place on Thursday, February 18th and Friday, February 19th. For additional information or to register for a tour, visit www.sanfranciscotribalandtextileartsshow.com. 

About Thomas Cole:

Tom Cole is a private dealer who specializes in tribal weavings and textiles of art historical and ethnographic significance from Central Asia. He has been active in the antique tribal rug and textile art trade for the past twenty years. Having lived a good part of his life in, and travelled extensively through, Asia, he is familiar with diverse textile and woven art traditions from the Near East and Persia, through Central Asia, and the Silk Road to China. More recently he has become a frequent visitor to both Turkey and the Central Asian Republic of Turkmenistan.