Craft provenance
Three crafts, three towns
Three generations later we still buy the same way - in person, from the families who weave and tie and print - and we still stitch every blouse in the workroom above the shop.
Patan
Patola
Six months on the loom
True Patan Patola, where warp and weft are both tie-dyed to the design before weaving begins and then aligned thread by thread on a slanted loom. Two weavers work together for roughly six months on one saree, which is why there is no such thing as a cheap one and why the pattern reads identically on both faces.
- Fabric
- Mulberry silk, natural and acid dyes
- Weave / Craft
- Patan double-ikat (Patola), reversible pattern
See the pieceJamnagar & Mandvi
Bandhani
Forty thousand knots
Bandhani tied in Jamnagar, where the water is said to hold the reds better than anywhere else in Gujarat. Each dot is a knot pulled with a fingernail before dyeing, and a saree this dense carries close to forty thousand of them - you can still see the ridges when it arrives, before the first wear opens them out.
- Fabric
- Pure georgette, 5.5 metres
- Weave / Craft
- Jamnagar bandhani, hand-tied and vat dyed
See the pieceKutch
Ajrakh
Sixteen rounds of printing
Ajrakh from Ajrakhpur near Bhuj, printed with hand-carved teak blocks and dyed with indigo and madder root over sixteen separate rounds of printing, washing and sun-drying. The deep blue and rust are natural dyes, so the colour deepens for the first few washes rather than fading.
- Fabric
- Modal-cotton, 2.5 metres
- Weave / Craft
- Ajrakh hand block print, natural indigo and madder
See the piece