Tradition · tie-and-dye weaving tradition · India
Sambalpurī bandhā ikat
Also known as Sambalpuri ikat, bandha, Barpali, Bargarh, Sonepur silk
The tie-resist weaving of western Odisha, in which the pattern is tied and dyed into the yarn before a thread is woven, so that the design exists in the bundle rather than on the cloth. Bandha weavers at Barpali, Sonepur and Bargarh work single and double ikat, and the double-ikat sari has to be aligned thread by thread on the loom.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 21.440, 83.960
Worth knowing
The technique is the same family as Gujarati patola and Andhra telia rumal and Indonesian ikat, and which direction it travelled is unresolved. Its late-twentieth-century revival was largely the work of one weaver, Padmashree Kunja Bihari Meher, and the Sambalpuri sari became a national political garment when Indira Gandhi and later Odia leaders wore it.
Connections (2)
- Craft tradition ofSambalpur
Sambalpur is the market and the name; the weaving is done at Barpali, Bargarh and Sonepur in the villages around it. Bandha is tie-resist — the pattern is dyed into the yarn before a thread is woven — so the design exists in the bundle and has to be aligned on the loom thread by thread. A regional capital's name now belongs to a cloth rather than to a kingdom.
- AnalogueBanaras brocade
Sambalpuri bandha and Gujarati patola are the two great Indian double-ikat traditions, eighteen hundred kilometres apart, and the technique is the same family as Andhra telia rumal and Indonesian ikat. Which way it travelled across the Bay is unresolved and probably unresolvable: the loom leaves no dated evidence, and every one of these coasts was trading with the others.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sambalpuri sari”. Geographical Indications registry entry for Sambalpuri bandha; Jasleen Dhamija, Woven Magic: The Affinity between Indian and Indonesian Textiles (2002).
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