How to Make a Varanasi Brocade

The city area of Varanasi is a tangled chaotic maze of narrow lanes, crowded cross roads, cycle rickshaws, shops and establishments making and selling myriad things, from steaming tea to bicycles and brocades. In the quieter inner by-lanes are the weavers, dyers, spinners and polishers.

The master weavers, who have graduated to being sellers, sit on thick mattresses, gaddis, covered with white sheets and bolster pillows, for their clientele who have to be shown dozens of saris before they can make their final choices.

Aptly, they are commonly known as gaddidars, those seated on the mattresses.

Considerable calculations and meticulous planning go into the first step of weaving a traditional brocade sari in the holy city of Varanasi.

A motif is worked out on a meticulously numbered and measured graph paper.

Subhash Suparkar of Varanasi is a veteran weaver and designer who takes pride in the excellence of his output.

This geometric design, prepared on a graph paper, will be transferred onto long sheets or cards, and punched with holes to be used on the jacquard loom.

Multiple rows of holes are punched on each card, each row of which corresponds to one row of the design and the many cards that compose the design of the textile are strung together.

An average sari uses 1500 to 2500 cards, while a more elaborate pattern would raise the number of cards ten-fold. Jacquard designs on saris tend to have a slightly mechanised look.

The graph paper diagram is given to the card punchers to prepare the strips to be attached from the top of the loom. The person who punches the cards as per the design is known as the patthakati.

Holes at specified levels are punched onto the cardboard strips, following the pattern on the graph. It is a task that has to be performed carefully and accurately so that there is no flaw in the woven pattern on the textile.

The original method was to melt down a pure silver ingot to make wire or strips called pasa, which were beaten to form wire not more than 13 microns in width. 400 kilometres of zari wire contained 1 kilogram of silver.

Here, a stock of zari in different hues lies on a shelf waiting to be stretched on the warp or weft of a loom.

It is a common sight to see workers carrying yarn and zari threads along the narrow streets of a weaver’s area in Varanasi.

Silk yarns hang from a ceiling in a weaver’s workshop in Varanasi.

Some yarn and threads are transported informally from a shop or workplace to another establishment.

Seen here is a small shop that sells a variety of dyestuffs to the weavers.

This old dyestuff shop is over one hundred years old, and still in use in Varanasi. It has old and new weighing scales and weights, and retains an aura of an ancient tradition.

Scores of different dye powders and other colouring materials are carefully marked and stacked for sale in the almost antique shop.

Yarn dyeing follows old simple methods when serving this old traditional craft practice.

The yarn is boiled to remove the gum left by the silk worm, till it attains a floss-like quality. It is sorted and tied into hanks. These are dyed in a variety of brilliant colours. The yarn is then wound onto a wooden five-spoke wheel before being wound onto spindles.

Dyeing yarn is a tough and tedious process in the small establishments that serve handloom weavers in Varanasi.

When only small quantities of yarn are required, dyeing is done in a small open area or courtyard, in or near the weaver’s establishment.

Pre-dyed yarn is also sold to weavers who need larger stocks, by shopkeepers who are in the profession of handloom weaving.

A young woman transfers coloured threads onto small shuttles that are thrown by the weaver back and forth across the warp thread while weaving.

Zari threads shimmer in the dim light of a handloom weaver’s workplace in Varanasi.

The zari threads are stretched along the warp when the weavers start to weave a shimmering ‘tissue’ sari, as the metallic gold sari is called in Varanasi.

The warp threads, stretched out on this loom, indicate the body of the sari will be blue and the end piece, the pallu, will be in red. It is likely that gold threads will be interspersed in the weft.

The weaver settles wayward threads among the lengths that have been stretched on the warp.

Shuttles are being readied to pass through the warp to provide the weft colours and designs in a handloom workshop in Varanasi.

An elderly weaver sits by his loom in Varanasi, with years of experience written on his face. A portion of a jacquard sheet hangs on the left.

Most butis have their own names, which are listed for common use in combination with straight or diagonal stripes, in clusters or scattered singly across the entire fabric.

Some of the formal names are mehrab, ashrafi, angoor, resha, kairi, gulab and kamal, with the suffix of buti attached depending on whether it was a single motif or a trellis.

Ram Lal Maurya is an eminent master weaver who is also been awarded the designation of Shilp Guru, which recognises him a master teacher of his craft.

Lengthy pieces of cloth are rolled on machines to undergo machine polishing.

Polishing is the first finishing process for a Banarasi textile before it can be processed further.

Once the handwoven fabrics are taken off the loom, they are typically wrapped around square wooden beams and stacked upright.

Small ends of threads that stick out after the sari is taken down from the loom are tidied with needles.

The reverse side of a gyaser piece shows how the technique results in heavy fabric with many coloured threads.

In Buddhist traditions, each colour and design represents a particular feature that is auspicious.

The person who cuts away the extraneous yarn on the reverse of the cloth is called the katorna.

A woven piece is finally checked meticulously over a lighted surface to ensure there are no cuts or flaws on the fabric.

At times, two persons or more are required to carry out the quality checking process in a handloom establishment in Varanasi.

At the very end of the hand weaving process is the role of the dhobi, the man who irons the textile piece and folds it perfectly, to be unfolded next only when it is shown to a customer.

Read more about Banarasi textiles here:
- The Marketplace
- The Holy City of Varanasi