| Description |
Varanasi, also known as Benares or Kashi, is a city on the banks of the river Ganges in Uttar Pradesh It is famous for its socio-economic and religious importance all over the world The city is equally well known for brocade-weaving which is a cluster based activity and is scattered all over Benaras and some adjacent districts In the weaving communities of Varanasi, every small house, every street, every open space is taken up by men busy with kilometres of thread The quality of its silk fabrics is considered the most refined in the country and a must as marriage gift Reeling is the skein preparation prior to dyeing The reeling machine is fed by yarn packages and winds them onto a reel, thereby forming the skein The yarn is separately reeled for tana (warp) and bana (weft) Three to five people are needed to reel the warp which is wrapped on a warp cylinder in sufficient length required to weave a known length of sarees Yarn for the weft is reeled on small cylindrical object in a process known locally as ‘nari bharana’ The weft-yarn is used in a shuttle called ‘dharki’, which is thrown from one to other side while weaving Depending on the end product, further handling needs to take place For example, cutting all the tiny threads left over from the weaving on the reverse side of the fabric to make it more transparent There is quality is also quality control and the ultimate finishing touch - folding Whether the end product is rich brocade enhanced with gold and silver thread for a Tibetan monastery or a soft and colorful saree to grace an elegant woman or a simple scarf worn around the neck, the weaving process will nonetheless be same Take all the elements that make up an Indian city - its temples, palaces, monuments, twisting narrow lanes, crooked houses, tiny shops, spider-web-like electrical distribution - throw it all into a large bag and spread out the contents over some two square kilometers along an immense ochre river, sacred from time immemorial And this is Varanasi Today there are four main varieties of Benarasi sari, which includes Katan (pure silk), Organza (Kora) with zari and silk, Georgette and Shattir According to design process, they are divided into categories like Jangla, Tanchoi, Vaskat, Cutwork, Tissue and Butidaar In order to cater to the need of the overseas and domestic buyers, the weavers of the cluster are also producing home furnishing, silk dhotis, stoles, scarves, mufflers, mats, dress material, wall hanging, cushion covers, table runners etc Any yarn undergoes a pre-treatment process that is carried out with boiling soap water to increase pliability and give the saree smooth and shinier texture It is then bleached and dyed, giving the yarn its intended color, crucial to its ultimate use Usually, dyeing is done manually with acid dye For centuries in Varanasi, a Muslim guild has embroidered and weaved with no equal Weaving is more of a cottage industry with thousands of people associated directly or indirectly with the handloom silk industry of the region around Varanasi The weavers take immense pride in weaving sarees, spun from special silk yarn, with specialized designs, motifs and scenes from the rich culture of India For centuries, traditional designs that embellished sarees have been drawn on grid paper For these drawings, a craftsman makes perforated cards - a kind of binary system, ancient picasa of the computer - that guides threads through the handloom according to the motif These are called ‘naksha patta’ Each card corresponds to a single line of weaving A design generally involves a few hundred cards These punched cards are characteristic of the Jacquard loom All the warp threads have to be threaded through the heald eyelet and its gap in the reed prior to weaving The heald is the part of the loom that is used to move the warp threads up and down The reed is like a comb and its purpose is to control the separation of the warp threads The open space between each wire of the reed is called dent A warp end is passed through a dent with the help of the hook, after it passes through the heald This process is called denting The weavers of the Benaras generally use old pit loom for weaving sarees, brocades and other products |
