Patola of Patan: The Double Ikat Marvel
Nine hundred years ago, a Jain king brought seven hundred weaver families to Patan. Three of their descendants still tie silk threads by hand before a single weft is thrown.
Around 1140 CE, the Solanki king Kumarapala brought the Salvi weaver community from the Deccan to his capital at Patan in Gujarat. He wanted a fresh silk patola every day for his Jain morning prayers. Nine hundred years later, only three Salvi families still weave true Patan Patola. They tie and dye every single warp and weft thread before a saree begins, working from a graph paper plan pinned to the wall. A single saree takes four months to four years of work. The design appears identical on both sides of the cloth. In the 16th century, the same sarees travelled east in Gujarati merchant ships to Java and Bali, where they became sacred temple cloth. In 2013, the word 'Patan Patola' finally received legal protection under the Indian GI Act. This lesson walks into the last workshop where the pattern is still tied into the thread before it is woven.
A Workshop in Patan
In a ground-floor workshop in the old city of Patan, in north Gujarat, on a weekday morning in the early 2020s, Bharat Salvi stands in front of a wooden frame with a bundle of silk threads in his hands. The bundle is about the thickness of his wrist. The silk has been bought from Bangalore and sits uncut in the workshop. Today, he will not weave a single thread. He will tie it.
Bharat Salvi is one of the three men in Patan who still weave true double-ikat Patola. The other two are his brother and his cousin. Between them, their families complete perhaps twenty to thirty full sarees a year. A single saree takes between four months and four years of work. The cheapest sells for about one and a half lakh rupees. A bridal one can cost four lakh or more. Brides wait years for them. Some families commission a saree before a daughter is even engaged, so that it will arrive in time for her wedding.
On the wall behind Bharat Salvi, a piece of graph paper is pinned up. Every small square on the graph is one thread. The pattern, which will be a Nari Kunjar (maidens and elephants), is drawn out square by square, warp and weft both. Today he will start tying the warp bundles. He will dip them in dye one colour at a time, untying and retying the ties between dips. When he is done with the warp, he will do the whole thing again on the weft. Then he will thread the loom. Only then will weaving begin. Only then will the two sides of the pattern meet each other for the first time.
How does a pattern planned thread by thread actually line up on the loom, when the warp and the weft cross each other at right angles? That is the question this lesson walks into. And the answer is almost nine hundred years old.