The never-fading glory of Patan Patola
Sunil Kumar
Patola silk sarees made in Patan district of Gujarat are considered a perfect example of extraordinary weaving across the globe. No textile museum is considered complete unless a Patola saree finds a place of prominence in its show window — be it in India or abroad.
These silk sarees, which are made using an extremely complicated double Ikat technique, have over 100 years of life, never fading colours and traditional designs. The craftsmanship is such that there is no reverse side in these sarees. You cannot really make out any difference in terms of colour, design, texture or smoothness between both sides of these sarees.
For centuries, the name Patan Patola has been synonymous with royalty, opulence and good luck, and it continues to be so even today. “Every genuine Patan Patola saree costs anything between Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 5 lakh or even more, depending on the intricacy of the design and the labour involved. It’s made only on order and its buyers are mostly Gujarati industrialists and NRIs,” says Rohit Bhai Salvi whose family has been into this business since the 11th century.
“Our ancestors migrated to Patan in Gujarat in the 12th century on the invitation of King Kumara Pala, who used one Patola every day for worship. In fact, around 700 Salvi families had migrated to Patan at that time. However, now only their family still continues to pursue this weaving art in Patan. Our sole aim is to preserve the textile art perfected by our ancestors and pass it on,” he says.
“Our younger generation is well educated. We have an architect, a physiotherapist and an engineer in our family, but all of them are also master Patola weavers and they continue to do everything they can to take forward the Patola heritage, which our family started documenting informally around 300 years ago,” Rohit Bhai Salvi adds.
The Patola Heritage Museum set up in 2014 at Patan stands testimony to this resolve of the Salvis. They utilised their family land to set up the museum, spending entirely from their pocket. This happens to be the only museum of Ikat work in the world, says Rohit Bhai Salvi.
The Salvis have being conferred with a number of awards by the government from time to time. The prominent among those being the Shilp Guru titles by former Presidents of India, APJ Abdul Kalam and Pratibha Patil in 2002 and 2009 respectively; the National Award by former Presidents Neelam Sanjiva Reddy and R Venkataraman in 1978 and 1987, respectively, and by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1997; besides the Vishwakarma Award by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.
The unique weaving craft of the Salvies has also attracted a large number of prominent personalities to their works and museum, including Hindi film stars Amitabh Bachchan, Om Puri and Deepti Naval, singer Anuradha Paudwal, Union minister Smriti Irani, Gujarat ex-Governor Kamla Beniwal, Delhi ex-CM Sheila Dixit, etc. Former US secretary of state Colin Powell also visited their Patola loom at Smithsonian Folk Life Festival in Washington DC in 2002.
Considered auspicious, Patolas find a mention in Kalpsutra, a 2,000-year-old Jain holy book, carvings in Ajanta caves and folk tales. It is said that medieval Moroccan traveller and scholar Ibn Battuta gifted Patolas to many kings during his visits to their courts in the 14th century.
Patola making involves a tedious process of dyeing loose thread strands much before the weaving is undertaken. Every millimetre of each thread strand is so carefully dyed in various colours that when those threads are woven together, they automatically fall in place to form a pre-decided design.
To do so, warp and weft silk threads are separately tied with cotton thread in accordance with the design to be created on the finished product. Knots made using cotton threads ensure that those portions do not pick colour on dyeing. The portions kept tied or untied during the first phase of dyeing, may be untied or tied before the second phase of dyeing, depending on the design.
Tying, untying, retying and dyeing processes are repeated till all different shades have been created on all warp and weft threads. The entire process of silk thread colouring for one saree of six yard length and 48 inch width takes around three to four months. All this while, threads are kept carefully arranged so that when weaving is done, these can be put on the loom in a perfect sequence to get the exact design. According to Rohit Salvi, use of natural vegetable colours for dyeing silk thread is another remarkable feature of the Patolas made by them.
The process of weaving also needs to be done very carefully because the displacement of even a single thread can spoil the entire design, he says. A primitive hand-operated harness loom made of rosewood and bamboo strips is used for weaving Patolas. Two Salvis take around 40-45 days to weave one Patola saree. The process is labour-intensive, time-consuming and requires high order of skill and dexterity as warp and weft of similar colours need to be placed in perfect sequence, thread by thread, to get the perfect design. Thus, it takes around five to six months to complete one Patola saree.
About market demand for Patan Patolas, Rohit says they already have pre-booked orders for the next four years. Anyone making a booking today will get the Patola only in 2020, he says with a broad smile on his face.
Seeing the passion with which the Salvis have been pursuing this traditional art of weaving and the number of pre-booked orders they already have, one can easily say that the charm of Patan Patola is there to stay for a long-long time. It’s a family’s tryst to keep alive an art form that their ancestors have cherished, nurtured, perfected and propagated for 35 generations.
