The weaving of silken yarn is but a last stitch in the complex tapestry of the art that is a Pochampally ikat saree. This creation of craftsmen in a tiny village cluster a few hundred kilometres from Hyderabad has its roots in an ancient craft that, in its own way, brings the world together.
The origins of ikat, are believed to be in the Malay-Indonesian word for “tie.” Like many ancient crafts, the tie-and-dye technique has a chequered origin story.
Ajanta cave fresco Mahajanaka Jatakas, Cave 1 Dancer with Musicians showing dancer dressed in ikat fabrics.
No one really knows where ikat was born, though many suggest it was created in modern-day Indonesia and prevailed across Asia.
Ajanta cave fresco Mahajanaka Jatakas, Cave 1 Dancer with Musicians showing dancer dressed in ikat fabrics.
What is known, however, is that the frescoes of Ajanta caves feature dancers adorning ikat garments. A centuries-old fragment patterned in the technique is found in Tokyo’s National Museum but seems to have been produced in Central Asia. Western African weavers make use of the technique, and in the Mediterranean, ikat first made an appearance in 17th-century Italy.
Along with Gujarat and Odisha, present-day Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have carefully nurtured this complex craftsmanship across ages. It is no wonder that the ikats of Pochampally have earned their own Geographical Indication (G.I) Tag.
Silk cocoons ready to be spun into a silk thread beginning the journey of an Ikat weave.
The story of this prized textile begins, like many others, with the threads spun from silken cocoons. Unlike other techniques, however, the silk yarn then goes through an intricate tie-and-dye ritual soaking in colour before they are separated into warp (lengthwise yarn) or weft (crosswise thread).
The blurry patterns are first mapped out on pristine white yarn, much like the pencil sketch of a painting. Resist dyeing then fills in the colour. Clusters of thread, tightly wrapped with binding resistant to colour are then bathed in vibrant shades. Always the base colour first, and with multiple changes in binding to follow the desired end pattern. An almost therapeutic cycle of binding, bathing, retying and then bathing in colour again gets the silk ready for the loom.
Bindings are removed and the paint palette of fibres is then woven into the final masterpiece. Sometimes the coloured fibres are only woven as warp, sometimes only as the weft. The crowning glory of the ikat artists is the double ikat weave, which combines dyed warp and weft in the weave.
Dyed thread is spun to small spindles used for the weft to make the design with precision.
In the last two hundred years, the finest ikat has come from Asia, India included, and the artisans at Pochampally have contributed to how the world recognises ikat today. From the costumes on the silver screen to posh ramps. From heirlooms passed on with blessings to the prized shelves of textile collectors. Over the last decade, a name that has rather quietly aided the meticulous craft is that of Chintakindi Mallesham.
A young school dropout in Pochampally, Mallesham would watch his mother labour for hours for a process called Asu. She, like all the other handloom weavers of the village, would wind metres of silk yarn over a large frame—pegs at either end of a four-foot structure—stretching arm and back muscles for hours, before the yarn could be woven. Seven years of work, repeated trial in the early nineties then helped create Mallesham’s Asu machine, a motorised machine that mechanised this process. Today it has halved the time needed to create a Pochampally ikat without compromising any of the craft’s integrity or the pride in a saree handcrafted with love.
The painstaking handiwork that goes behind lining up every single multicolour thread to a loom, which results in the ikat’s blurry designs is what makes this weave special, almost treasured. There is perfection in the seemingly imperfect haziness of every motif inspired by nature and geometry.
If you have enjoyed the remarkable process of making a Pochampally Ikat saree, we invite you to explore our curated collection of Ikat sarees from across India on our online store.