The first word, Revival is often heard and discussed among textile/saree enthusiasts.  It is used to describe activities connected to weaving and generally a craft but for those not tuned-in, can mean many things. Revival is aptly used to detail the process of creating anew a complete weaving or craft tradition that’s neglected or lost.  Reasons for such decline of a craft can be many; Loss of a key artisan, artisanal family taking up an alternative profession, poor skill continuance, non-availability of raw materials, reduced economic viability, poor access to markets, natural disasters, etc.

In recent times, one can find many stories of revival initiatives in India especially with handloom weaving, thanks to many spirited individuals and organisations. Some examples of revival in the weaving and textile domain are Kunbi sarees of Goa, Patted Anchu sarees of Gajendragad and Udupi sarees of coastal Karnataka.  All of these weaving traditions had seen better days and there were a few or no weavers who continued its production.  Even in the Kanjivaram weaving traditions, many techniques, patterns and motifs have vanished.  For instance, the fine cotton sarees of Woraiyur, Koorainadu sarees from the Mayladuthurai region and the pretty kai-Sungadi sarees from Madurai in Tamil Nadu are dwindling due to low demand and lack of innovation.  

The other two words from the title are what we use at MAYA to describe activities that are more product related.  Re-creation of a product is, near faithful production of a saree or a design that existed some 30-40 years ago but is now unavailable on store shelves.  Quite often they would have belonged to a senior generation and were handed down as heirlooms.  These vintage Kanjivarams often sport pure silver and gold zari work in exquisite detail and the motifs tell a story of that era.  More important than that, these sarees have a hundred sweet memories wrapped in their folds, while the actual saree itself cannot be draped due to their physical condition.

Such sarees can be re-created with sufficient help from an experienced weaver. The process involves creating a graphic design of the saree afresh by faithfully incorporating all the design elements and motifs of the body, borders and the mundani(seragu).  This is a time-consuming and important activity.  The graphic design becomes the base for making punch cards for jacquard looms which help in reproducing the repetitive motifs accurately.  Parallelly, the yarn dyer prepares a colour recipe for dying the yarn for warp and weft.  At this point, it is apt to mention that the original saree is made available to the designer, yarn dyer and the weaver throughout the entire process till the final product comes out.  As most people think, images shot on mobile cameras are not suitable for identification of colours, designs and weaving techniques.

All that is said so far about re-creation of a vintage Kanjivaram is good for theory. Commercials play a vital role too.  At the very beginning the weaver must decide whether his skill sets, loom set up and process is suitable for the job at hand.  Second, the quantity of sarees that needs to be woven with the same design.  Setting up a loom exclusively for the production of one particular design scheme with a chosen set of warp-weft yarn colours is expensive, going up to ₹40,000/- and this cost must be recovered over the total number of sarees that are going to be produced in that batch.   One must note that this cost does not include the cost of yarn and zari, dying, weaving labour and the profit mark up.  Over the years we have taken up several projects to re-create vintage Kanjivarams.  The minimum time required for re-creation can be 3-4 months generally but can stretch up to a year.

The very first re-creation project we did was a mustard saree with red-green ganga jamuna with veldhari body and reku design on the mundani.  (See picture below).  This was done for three sisters in Bengaluru and the original saree belonged to their mother.  With permission from the original owners, we sold a number of sarees after production and even did colour variants of the body keeping the borders and mundani in the same colour scheme.

Old Saree

New Saree – Variant 1

New Saree – Variant 2

The third term – Re-weave is a production of a saree which would have gone out of stock recently.   Such an activity is possible when the needed saree is correctly identified and the loom which produced the saree is still in the same punch card set up.  Commercially, this is very viable, and the saree will be roughly the same price as the original but needs a minimum of 4-6 weeks.

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