James Baird

What’s common between Irish businessman James Baird, chairman of one of the oldest linen companies in the world, WFB Baird & Co, and Yasmin Kidwai, a filmmaker, former municipal councillor, and cultural entrepreneur? Both are passionate about supporting artisanal brands with a story and leaving a cultural footprint.

And therein lies a story — the way we define culture is evolving, shaped by new voices and very alive to change. Also, how the twain of culture and commerce are meeting in fascinating collaborations between brands and artists.

Baird — who divides his time between Kerala (where WFB Baird has a factory and he has a home on an island), Greece and Ireland — was in Delhi recently to launch Burgoyne Original Masters, a storytelling platform that spotlights masters of art, music, design, culture and craft. The launch also saw the unveiling of a sumptuously put together coffee-table book featuring nine diverse artists, including a weaver-designer, a wildlife photographer, a yoga teacher, a kathak dancer, a numismatist, and a dastaango storyteller. Some are established masters while a few others are emerging voices. “All of them, in their own way, are changing the way we look, listen and remember,” says the note to the book.

Why this initiative? “The simple reason is that India has been very good for my family and I want to be able to give back. And a lot of our textiles are about design, about innovation, about art,” says Baird, the fourth-generation scion of the storied linen company. “If you look at the coffee-table book, we have nine stories, each from different fields, each passionate about what they do. And if I can create a little platform from here and give a little helping hand, be it a grant here or a grant there…” he says.

While the details of the grant are being worked out, Baird says the patronage will take the shape of “an artist support fee, plus, through the year, we will find different projects to collaborate with them”. One can understand the linen maker collaborating with the weaver and the visual artists, but what form does the partnership take with a numismatist and a yoga teacher?

“So we find projects to do with them where we can integrate linen as a medium and do different kinds of things,” responds Baird. “For me, all of these people are promoting ideas. And what is a business at the end of the day? It is people and ideas,” he says. Basically, it’s “communicate, collaborate, celebrate”, he says, summing it up.

This is something that Kidwai’s ventures also do, though she says she has begun to dislike the word “collaboration”, which has become overused in reels and has a connotation of “free”. “For us, collaboration is creating,” she says. Kidwai’s approach is culture-first with strands of commerce woven in, as she feels art forms will not survive without that. A documentary filmmaker who won a seat in Delhi’s 2017 municipal elections, and does a podcast, ‘A Delhi Love’, among other things, Kidwai has brought together all her ventures under a platform called Culture Plus.

Last year, along with her business partner Himanshu Anand, she conceptualised the Sufi Heritage Festival at Sunder Nursery. Featuring music, poetry, storytelling and culinary encounters, the festival returns in its second edition on February 28, with an added element — a Sufi Bazaar, a marketplace of 15 artisan-led brands in the areas of textiles, craft and jewellery. The participating brands embody the Sufi values of freedom and expression, says Kidwai.

Kidwai says Manish Saksena, the textile savant who leads Aadyam Handmade, an Aditya Birla social enterprise, has co-curated the marketplace. They will take it to other cities, too. “It’s going to be more like an experience — and the market gets a life of its own,” she says. The Sufi Heritage project will also host two retreats this year. As Kidwai sums up, “Art is now evolving to fit in with different audiences.”

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Published on February 9, 2026