Zari Embroidery of India
|
The Zari Embroideries of India are one of the greatest embellishments on precious cloth. The main centers of production are Benares in Uttar Pradesh and Surat in Gujarat.
The Brocade of Benares
The town known by its ancient religious name as Kasi, by its present Sanskritized name of Varanasi, and more colloquially as Benares, liesa athwart the Ganges and is one of the oldest continually inhabited places in the world. It is one of the four most important places of Hindu pilgrimage, and an auspicious place to die and to begin again the cycle of rebirth. The city is a warren of alleys and gulleys leading down to the bathing and burning ghats of the river through a network of tiny shops, temples and ‘dharmsalas’ (places of rest) for pilgrims.
|
|
Alaipura is traditionally the district of Varanasi where the famous Benares brocades are woven, though they are now also woven in other parts of the city. Brocades are textiles woven with warp and weft threads of different colors and often of different materials. The Benares brocades are woven in silk with profuse use of metal threads on the ‘pallavs’ (endpieces) and the field of the sari.
The brocades are woven in workshops known as ‘karkhanahs’ which are a series of interconnecting rooms, usually on the first floor. Almost every square inch of ground space in the room is taken up with looms, and above each loom hangs a crowded arrangement of strings leading down to the loom heddles. The weavers work in artificial light (nowadays, by an electric light), in a calm and quiet atmosphere which is conducive to the concentration needed for the weaving of such complicated designs.
The zari thread, known as ‘kalabattun,’ consists of finely drawn gold, silver or base metal thread wound round a silk thread. Silk traditionally came from Bengal, Central Asia and Italy, but now Kashmir or Japan.
Benares brocades are woven on pitlooms. Traditionally the design of the brocade was first worked out on paper and then an expert known as a ‘naksha bandha’, rendered the design into cotton threads on a ‘naksha’ (the indigenous thread device that performs the same function as the jacquard). The naksha bandhas of Benares were so skilled that they tied the designs for the weavers of other brocading centres, such as Surat in Gujarat and Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh.
There are different types of Zari works: Zardozi, Kamdani, Meena Work, Kataoki Bel, Makaish, Tilla or Marori Work, Gota Work and Kinari Work.
Brocade of Surat
The Gujarat region is generally considered the home of silk and brocade weaving in India. Until recent times, Ahmadabad, Surat, Jamnagar and other towns in Gujarat produced ‘kinkhab’ brocade.
Motifs, small in scale, of flowers, animals, birds and human figures were set out in regular horizontal rows, against a purple, red or green background.
This Gujarati kinkhab was used for furnishing cloth or as skirt lengths. The other important weaving centers are Paithan and Aurangabad in Maharashtra, and Maheshwar and Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh.
Paithani saris are famous for their brocade ‘pallavs’, which were woven with a weft of gold thread. The saris of Chanderi, near Gwalior in Madhaya Pradesh, with silk warp and cotton wefts, have stylistic similarities to those of Paithan, whereas those of Maheshwar, in south-west Madhaya Pradesh traditionally have a chequered field with reversible borders, so that the border pattern is the same on both faces of the cloth.
Surat’s Zari industry
Surat is a once-famous port, situated in south Gujarat, north of Bombay. Three centuries ago, it was one of the biggest cities in India and the chief port of the Mughal Empire. At Surat is produced nearly all India’s Zari Metal thread for brocading and embroidery and the thin silver wire used for weaving.
The traditional method of manufacture involves the fusing of a covering of real gold on to a solid silver bar in a furnace. Then the metal is drawn through a series of dies of ever decreasing diameter, until thread of the fineness of human hair is obtained. This wire, by now a few miles long, will still retain a covering of fused gold. It is then beaten flat and wrapped around a silk thread.
In Mughal times, before Bombay superseded it as the main west-coast port, Surat was the premier port for the Haj pilgrims on their way to Mecca. These pilgrims provided the market for zari- work weaves and embroidery. The zari industry declined in the nineteenth century, due to competition from French machine-made zari thread, and only revived after the industry was given tariff protection in the 1920s. From then on, Surat maintained a stranglehold over the Indian Market. Although it lost some of its main markets in Pakistan in 1947, it has recovered through partial mechanization and the introduction of artificial zari thread where copper wire is silver- gilded by electrolysis.
Images sources from Google Search Engine, with the term ‘Zari' and ‘Zardozi’ |
 |
 |
|
