Indian Textiles
Below is an overview of what I currently know about Indian textiles and procedures involved in decorating them. This set of notes is merely a bare surface knowledge, giving a general impression of some of the more prominent Indian textile decoration methods, but it is hopefully useful for a newcomer to this area, which is my intent. I wrote all the descriptions and shot all of the pictures with saris in my collection, sources for more information are listed below.
Resisted Thread Techniques
Ikat Sari
This sari is all ikat. Ikat is a technique whereby either the warp or weft threads are resisted and dyed before they are woven. This technique produces the slightly drippy, fuzzy or wavy pattern you see here, a result of the human who is weaving being unable to line up the resisted fibers absolutely perfectly. The Ajanta Caves show pictures that suggest this technique dating from ~600-800 AD. In this example, all ikat is done with weft threads, giving it a "horizontally drippy" direction.
The pallav is at the top of the picture to the left, the orange ground with purple stripes with yellow diamonds. The green dashed diamonds over leaves and flowers is the body of the sari. Absolutely all of the ikat on this comes from a weft-resist, thus why it's "drippy" in the shorter direction - selvedge to selvedge. I thought it's pretty neat how all the motifs are chosen in such a way that this enhances them.
Shopping Tips:
Ikats are largely judged based upon their precision. The most expensive versions can range into the 100s, while the cheapest can be found in the $30-$50 range. Orissan ikat tends to be the most valued, as it's usually very precise with complicated patterns. The ikat shown here is a Southern ikat which was substantially more affordable.
Ikat and Patola Dupatta
"Patola", in my understanding, is a term used when a combination of warp and weft ikat are combined to make a single form. The image on the left is the ikat section. The horizontal row of flowers in that image is warp-ikat; the vertical rows are weft ikat. Notice the difference in the direction of the drippiness... The image on the right is patola. Notice that the patola is fuzzy in both the vertical and horizontal sections. The ikat image is fuzzy in both directions - the flowers on the bottom were part of the warp, while the flowers in columns above are from the weft. But they are crisply linear in one direction at any time. This one really has my heart. The flowers are about the size of my thumb. The boxes are about an inch/inch and a half.
Shopping Tip: For the most part, patolas are more expensive than ikats, as they are more complicated to execute. This one happens to be fairly simple.
Ikat and Zari Sari
This is an example of ikat combined with zari (woven gold threads). Both warp and weft ikat have been used separately at different points, to make a border and to decorate the pallav (the fancy bit at one end). For more information on zari techniques... read on.
Zari Techniques
Zari is generally translated as any process of embellishing a sari with metallic threads. Most particularly, zari usually describes weaving gold, or other metallic threads into the textile at creation. Zari threads can be incorporated as part of the regular warp or weft, for a solid striped pattern, or it can be used as a "supplementary" warp or weft, which incorporates a more complex pattern that is usually described as "brocaded". The sari to the left is a green sari with a dark green border, ornamented by red and sari stripes, and both supplementary warp and supplementary weft techniques.
To talk about supplementary threads, I've chosen pictures of a sari I purchased in Bangalore India. It's a Kanchipuram wedding sari, named for the area in which it was woven. It's a hand woven work, with supplementary warp and weft designs. It's particularly noteworthy for being "double color" or "split" - the warp threads are alternating dark red and black, so that the angle of the sari shows either a red, black or red/black color.
Supplementary Weft
In both pictures, the weft goes horizontally.
A supplementary weft technique involves the use of at least one extra shuttle, holding the weft thread. The shuttle is then passed under and over selected rows of warp thread to create a pattern. In hand weaving, to conserve thread, the shuttle direction is reversed at the end of the pattern and used for the next row, creating a loop at each side of the pattern. Machines are not generally so precise. The shuttle may be guided entirely by hand. However, to assist in weaving speed and accuracy, extra heddles may be added to manipulate warp threads according to the pattern. Manipulating threads by hand takes time, adding heddles increases the complexity and the cost of loom machinery. Supplementary weft patterns on saris are usually either floating motifs in the large body of the sari, or they are a solid pattern, generally across the pallav. Supplementary thread patterns are usually visible from the front as a series of gold boxes, that are made of threads running the weft direction.
Supplementary Warp
A supplementary warp technique, involves adding extra threads to the warp of the loom, meaning that they have to be incorporated at loom-setup, rather than during weaving (as is the case with weft-threads). From hence comes the term "warping the loom". Supplementary warp threads are manipulated independently of the regular "ground" fabric, so that they can form their own pattern. This manipulation is incorporated by the use of heddles - devices used to raise and lower a given set of threads above and below the weft weaving area, so the warp threads will go under and over the weft threads. The complexity of the pattern dictates the complexity of the loom setup and the number of heddles required. A different heddle is needed to raise or lower each row or section in a pattern. The complexity in this type of weaving rests largely in planning the pattern and organizing the loom.
Drawn Thread Looms
Drawn thread looms provide an alternative to the more modern heddle system. Instead of using heddles, the threads of a warp are attached to strings, secured to pegs above the loom. These strings are tied into bundles, depending on what sequences of threads need to be raised or lowered. The bundle of strings is pulled upwards to raise a set of warp threads, or returned to its original position to lower them. This more primitive form of weaving is infinitely more manpower consuming, but far less technically complex. Typically, drawn thread looms require two operators - one to raise and lower threads, and a second to do the actual weaving.
Rear of Supplementary Threads
The reverse side of many of today's supplementary-thread woven fabrics show long patches of unanchored threads. Not all supplementary fabrics have these qualities, there are a number of ways to minimize this thread waste, but it's an easy thing to look for. See left. The warp or weft threads form these loops by traveling below the fabric, until it's part of the pattern involves that color. Since it isn't seen in normal wear, it doesn't need to be tacked down or secured in any way.
Bandhani
This is an entirely non-woven technique, which uses resist methods to pattern the fabric. Resist meaning that something is done to the fabric before it is dyed to make sure that some areas do not absorb the color of the dye bath. In this case, the fabric is drawn into tiny points, which are then wrapped tightly with thin thread. These tiny points are marked on the fabric to produce a pattern made of dots. When the fabric has been dyed, the thread is then removed, forming a pattern of little white circles. In this case, some segments have then been "spot dyed", dyed by applying a little bit of dye to the small sections of textile, in order to produce yellow dots as well as white dots. This probably occurred after the textile was dyed. The Ajanta cave paintings (600-800 AD) show textiles strongly similar to this type of technique. In those cases, the dots are generally an even spotted pattern. Other sources show circles. Fustat textiles (1200-1400AD) show block prints that clearly imitate the bandhani technique, using more complicated patterns.
Block Printing
Ah... the subject nearest and dearest to my heart... for more info on block printing, see my block printing information. I'll try to keep this page a little less technical!! Block printing is any technique whereby "stuff" was put on a patterned block and the block was pressed onto the finished product. Both books and saris can be "block printed". In my experience, the "stuff" printed on a textile is one of several things - paint, dye, mordant or resist. Paint sits on top of a fabric, whereas dye bonds to the fibers of the fabric, so paint has a noticeable texture. Both paint and dye are known fabric-decorating techniques in period, but you'd have to make a case for paint printing (as opposed to hand painting) and for paint printing on wearable textiles. Most of the books I've read suggest that the dye may not have been printed on, the mordant may have been printed on. The mordant is usually a metallic substance, and is used to enhance the chemical reaction of the dye bonding to the fabric fibers. It's hard to trace where a mordant or a dye was made into a paste or printed on the textile, in either case, we can see cases (particularly in the case of non-blue colors) of a color print, where the "stuff on the block was what became the colored part of the print. "Resist block printing" is any form of block printing using a resist as opposed to a paint or a dye. Resists, such as clay, wax or even tapioca pudding, stick to the fabric and *prevent* color when the fabric is later soaked in a dye bath. I can just yammer your ear off about this technique!
Khadi Dupatta
Khadi is modern home-industry cotton. It starts rough, but gets soft with repeated washings. It's supposedly very abuse-proof, lasting for a very long time. It was a trend in Indian manufacturing started by Gandhi, but certainly is a rough-made home textile that I can't see as inappropriate to any time or place, since it uses primitive techniques of hand spinning and weaving.
The technique used to decorate it is "block printing", a process near and dear to my heart. :) It's dye-printed, meaning the black and red was stamped directly on the cloth, rather than resist-printed, where a substance was stamped on the cloth to prevent a dye from staining that section of fabric. If you flip the shawl over, the print has not permeated the other side, that's an easy way to figure out how it was done. It took two different blocks and two different stamping rounds to get the black and the red on the textile. In some places, the human factor can be see, for they do not line up perfectly.
These are still available in a variety of colors. They were a certain Pennsic pick for me, since they are simple, thick, and seem nigh-indestructible!
Vintage Block-Print Sari
This is a chiffon vintage sari with a very traditional block print design. I can see it is a hand block print, because the colors don't line up exactly, and there are edges to the pattern where the blocks were aligned. The term "vintage" is worth noting. "Vintage" means very old, not "very period". It usually describes something made in the vicinity of 50 years ago, and held by a private collector. They are usually very attractive, collectible saris, quite often in good condition. But they are old, and not necessarily up to the rigors of regular wear. Nor do they say anything about the historical nature of their techniques or patterns. They *may* be historical, but you need to know what you are looking for. The difference of 50 years between the manufacture of these textiles and now is far, far less than the difference of 350 years between the end of the SCA period and the vintage sari era. The English colonization of India had a great impact in the time in between.
Embroidery
Embroidery can be really hard to trace down as a period technique. I'm working on it, but there's a lot more research to be done in this area. It's quite likely, and even probable, that people did embroidery, and a couple of trusted friends have assured me of seeing extant textile in books from the Calico Museum and the book "Zardozi: Glittering Gold Embroidery". Of note, modernly, there's a couple of different techniques worth talking about.
Tribal
Tribal embroidery generally features bright colors and simple motifs. They are often free hand, with no signs of being marked, or necessarily symmetrical. They are usually done with colored thread, and the types of stitches, subject matter, and layout define the tribes who produced them. Tribal research is generally exceedingly difficult, as the tribes in historic India were not usually literate, and historic writings of foreign observers are not often seen translated into English. This is about the sum total of what I know about tribal embroidery. I'm an urban temple girl, myself. :) The image to the left is a wall hanging of what I would call a basic tribal design.
Shisha Mirror
Shisha mirror embroidery is the process of attaching tiny mirrors to a textile, usually in combination with other types of tribal stitches. I would definitely call it a tribal technique. Folks I trust I have told me that primitive shisha embroidery is period, according to extant samples. The image at right shows shisha mirrors attached to a wool shawl.
Zardozi Embroidery
This sari is all ikat. Ikat is a technique whereby either the warp or weft threads are resisted and dyed before they are woven. This technique produces the slightly drippy, fuzzy or wavy pattern you see here, a result of the human who is weaving being unable to line up the resisted fibers absolutely perfectly. The Ajanta Caves show pictures that suggest this technique dating from ~600-800 AD. In this example, all ikat is done with weft threads, giving it a "horizontally drippy" direction.
The pallav is at the top of the picture to the left, the orange ground with purple stripes with yellow diamonds. The green dashed diamonds over leaves and flowers is the body of the sari. Absolutely all of the ikat on this comes from a weft-resist, thus why it's "drippy" in the shorter direction - selvedge to selvedge. I thought it's pretty neat how all the motifs are chosen in such a way that this enhances them.
References
My profound apologies. In a busy week of editing handouts, I have apparently lost the updated copy of this text with completed references. I've drawn from any number of sources, but here are the ones that are readily on hand. For the interested reader, I will gladly email or copy a complete set of references at a later date.