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  Banned a few decades ago, Dhebaria Rabari embroidery has seen a resurgence in recent years. Styles are simpler, the essence remains.  The ban had been imposed because the embroidery, part of a woman's trousseau, had become so intricate that weddings were often delayed. Apparently, women also sometimes used the embroidery to delay early marriage; a form of resistance implemented by taking years to complete their embroidery. The community, traditionally nomadic, has lived in the deserts of Western India for centuries. The Kairi, a raw mango, the central motif here, stands alone signifying auspiciousness and fertility. The tip may invoke a bud through Persian influences symbolizing endurance, bending but not breaking, in the desert’s harshness. The Kairi is placed in an explosive layout from which rays emanate, placing the woman who wears the garment, a saree in this case, in the role of one who brings abundance and sustains the family. Although they are reminiscent of the sun,...

Traditionally, these artistic sarees weren't sold, they were often women's dreams and diaries, although the art form can be bought easily nowadays. The birds represented freedom, parrots were associated with (secret) love, roosters (and hens) with domestic abundance, and peacocks with royalty. White was purity, terracotta strength, and green, nature; the tree of life. The flowering vines, the interconnectedness of life, the fence a border (protection or prison, depending on one's perspective), and running stitch, the constant reliable flow of a river's waters. The bird's eyes were often sewed on last, bringing the birds to life, just as idols are often animated.  Read a Nakshi Kantha correctly, and you'll probably learn more about the embroiderer than you would through hours of conversation with her.  And these diaries, they're safe — they're devoid of meaning to most. Reading specifically into this kantha motif of paired birds drawn from a verse in the ...

  Gara sarees are Parsi sarees; they're often referred to as embroidered paintings. For the most part, they feature traditional motifs embroidered using silk thread usually on georgette or crepe silk. A single saree can take months to make although the making of Gara sarees is very much a living tradition. There have been experiments with weaving Gara-inspired designs into Banarasi sarees, for example.  The saree photographed here is a new-fangled Parsi gara combining Persian, Indian, and Chinese influences, as such sarees always do. It was acquired not at a dedicated saree shop but at a tiny all-things-Parsi place which I visited along with a lady who made life seem so much better just by her having been part of it. She'd come down to Pune, where I was at the time, just for a day and I've kept the saree because the memory of that evening is one I treasure.  The shop was overseen by a gentleman who (not too surprisingly) spoke about the materials used and the man-hours th...

Aari Embroidery Aari embroidery, executed with cotton floss using miniature awl-like needles, was once the mochi or cobbler embroidery of Saurashtra. Almost extinct there, the technique survives in Kashmir where it began to be used in the early 19th century to embellish shawls. Shawls, for which Kashmir has been renowned for centuries, had become increasingly complex to weave, and expensive to buy, over time. By the end of the 18th century, they had generally begun to be woven in sections due to their complexity, and then joined together with almost invisible stitches by rafugars to cut down on production time. It is believed that an Armenian buying agent for a Constantinople firm, Khwaja Yusuf, who visited Kashmir in 1803, attempted to further reduce both production time and expense by introducing amli or needlework shawls. The male rafugars responsible for joining pieces of woven Kashmir shawls together became embroiderers and, to this day, Kashmiri embroiderers are o...

Chikan Embroidery on a Cotton Saree It isn’t clear how Chikan embroidery developed in India although it does appear that it came to Avadh, where Uttar Pradesh now roughly lies, in North India via Bengal in the East a few centuries ago. The embroidery itself may have originated in Persia and, after making its way to India, have found itself being used as an inexpensive alternative to Jamdani textiles: the Chikan embroidery of Dacca (in what is now Bangladesh) appears to predate that of Uttar Pradesh. That said, there is also a belief that Chikankari was developed under the patronage of the Mughals: ‘Chikan’ is apparently a derived from a word that means ‘intricate’ in Persian, while ‘Kari’ is the Hindi word for ‘work’. Early Chikan embroidery seems to have been entirely on fine white muslin in white cotton thread, with over 72 different kinds of stitches being employed. The embroidery of the highest quality could apparently only be seen from one side of the fabric, and generall...

Kasuti-embroidered Dharwar Cotton Saree Kasuti embroidery is a form of generally-reversible embroidery which is native to the Dharwar region of Karnataka. The embroidery is traditionally executed by counting the threads of the warp and the weft, without the designs being outlined on to the fabric, and is believed to have developed during the time of the Chalukya dynasty between the 6 th and 12 th centuries. The origins of Kasuti embroidery are far from clear though. Similar embroidery appears to have been executed in Egypt from where it may have spread both to Western Europe and to India in the East. Within India, Kasuti could be considered to be a variant of Kashida embroidery seen in the country's North; it may have come to Karnataka through the Lambini tribe which is believed to have migrated to Karnataka via Gujarat from Rajasthan. There are four kinds of stitches which are generally used in Kasuti embroidery: (1) Gavanthi or Gaunti which is a running stitch rat...

"Here are patches, Felled edges, Darned threads, Strengthening old utility, Pending the coming of the new. Yes, I have been mending … But also, I have been enacting A little travesty on life." — Hazel Hall Cotton Kantha Saree Kantha sarees are embroidered sarees primarily from what was once Bengal; the embroidery was initially a simple running stitch used to prolong the life of fabric by joining various pieces of worn cloth together. In this sort of kantha, the outline of the pattern would generally be embroidered and then filled in with several layers of running stitches. ‘Kantha’, a term whose etymology is uncertain but may be derived from the Sanskrit ‘kontha’ for rags, evolved considerably over the years deriving inspiration from a variety of sources though. It is believed that Kantha imbibed everything from a Mughal aesthetic (as seen in Lehr Kantha which features undulating wave-like patterns) to the English sense of design (which led to Holbein stitches, cr...