Venkatgiri weavers resurrect forgotten motifs

Two years ago, Patnam Subramanyan, 43, examined the border of an old cotton sari. The gold stood out even though the body of the sari had been destroyed. It brought back a long-buried memory for Subramanyan, a part of Antaran, Tata Trusts’ livelihood programme for craftspersons. His grandfather had woven the same rudraksh pattern on the handloom in their home in Venkatagiri in Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati district.

The fine-count cotton Venkatgiri sari is over 300 years old. Traditionally, it was made for royalty, mostly in whites and pastel shades with real gold and silver thread borders with 200-300 thread count. The weavers were so well looked after by the dynastic rulers of Velugoti, Bobbili and Pithapuram that it is believed they only created limited editions.

Over time, the stories of queens wearing these saris became part of folklore, stories echoed in the homes of weavers. With powerlooms gaining popularity in the 1950s, many handloom weavers were forced into other occupations or switched to weaving more massy designs.

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On National Handloom Day (7 August), textile brand WeaverStory’s store in New Delhi reintroduced, perhaps for the first time in 70 years, four archival designs on about 10 saris, putting the focus back on the Venkatagiri weave. “These patterns had been missing from the lexicon of the weave for the last 70 years till we reintroduced them in the market with the help of the weavers,” explains Nishant Malhotra, founder and CEO, WeaverStory.

WeaverStory tied up with Antaran two years ago to recreate the lost design language of the Ventakagiri weave. Helping them on the ground were master artisans and entrepreneurs, including Subramanyan, who mobilised other weavers to work on original patterns that they had only heard of from their fathers and grandfathers. Octogenarian Pramadwara Devi from the former royal family of Venkatagiri loaned many of her vintage Venkatagiri saris to Antaran so that the weavers could study the motifs. “Many of these saris reintroduced the weavers to long-forgotten patterns, allowing a documentation of sorts to take place,” says Malhotra.

Papana Narasimha Rao, 38, a weaver who is part of this Venkatagiri revival project, says he feels a strong sense of identity with the weave, knowing that he is associated with recreating the motifs and patterns made by his forefathers.

With a thread count up to 300s, the Venkatagiri saris were described as “woven air” for their soft texture, lightness and wearability. “Traditionally, the weavers used the jamdani technique, but in Venkatagiri they used the gold weft as opposed to the cotton weft used in Bengal jamdani,” says Malhotra, explaining that the weavers developed buttas (patterns) inspired by nature. In the mid-1900s, with the quality of cotton declining, weavers switched to silk with mix-and-match borders and motifs borrowed from more popular Banarasi, Kanchipuram and Paithani styles.

Gradually, many weavers moved away from the profession to become rickshaw pullers, masons and daily wage labourers. The younger generation, especially those in their early 20s, have joined the IT sector or electronic manufacturing companies in nearby towns. Some moved to other weaving clusters, most notably Kanchipuram, the hub for silk saris.

“The weavers in Venkatagiri were losing their craft heritage and that’s why the revival was important,” says Malhotra. While WeaverStory worked closely with Antaran and the weavers, they also helped in setting up the looms besides creating a quality supply chain for yarn, dye and other raw materials, and paying the master weavers on a monthly basis for their work. When the revival project began, the challenges were aplenty.

Unlike other clusters, there isn’t a dyeing unit in Venkatagiri—the saris are taken to Coimbatore for this. This increases costs and the time taken for the completion of a sari. It typically takes a weaver eight to 12 weeks to complete a Venkatagiri sari. “What works, however, is the genuine enthusiasm of the Venkatagiri weavers to connect with their legacy,” says Malhotra.

One of the weavers whose home had a tin roof, renovated his entire house and had a pukka roof put in when the revival project started. This was critical, given that the looms are installed in homes. Leakages during rainy season due to poor roofing would have caused them to stop work temporarily.

In the past two years, more weavers have connected with the traditional practice. Subramanyan says they started the project with 10-odd weavers but now work with close to 30.

According to government estimates, Venkatagiri has 40,000 inhabitants, of which 20,000 are weavers. “Many of them,” explains Malhotra, “work from other clusters, doing other mass market weaves and not the original Venkatagiri weaves and patterns, which are now being revived.”

When the Antaran-WeaverStory project began, there were two master weavers and 20 associate weavers. Today, there are 10 master weavers and close to 50 associate weavers, with many more wanting to recreate the traditional motifs for another capsule collection that will be launched later in the year.

“Though early days, we are being told by our master weavers in Venkatagiri that many want to return to creating patterns as their forefathers did. It’s early to predict but we are hoping that youngsters will take pride and return to weaving some of these original Venkatagiri patterns,” says Malhotra.

Abhilasha Ojha is a Delhi-based art and culture writer.

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