Salvaging a lost tradition

Dazzling textures

But from such regal heights, these heirlooms have descended into the depths of oblivion, or at best into specially — designed, climate-controlled glass cases, in the palaces of erstwhile Indian maharajas. Minakari  in jeweller’s parlance means enamelling and minakar saris/stoles were the ones, in which the designs were embroidered on silk, with gold and silver threads, as if enamelled.

Among the various exhibits shown in the Festival Of India exhibitions in USA in 1985, one item that caught the attention of all the viewers was the famous minakar saris of Hyderabad. The Mughal minakar saris of Hyderabad, belonged to the  royal family of the Nizam and his noblemen, the Paigahs, who were not as as rich as the  Nizam, but were richer than many other Indian Maharajas. One must credit the re-discovery of this craft to Jacqueline Kennedy  (the wife of late President Kennedy — and one of the Patrons of the Festival of India exhibition of 1985), who saw these saris, when she visited some of her Indian  friends from royal families.

Kennedy was successful in enlisting the help of Martand Singh (then the cultural Czar of India and erstwhile Maharaja of Rewa) and urged by him, the princely families of India, especially those of Hyderabad unearthed fabulous minakar saris /dresses/ stoles, each of them worth lakhs, for display in the Festival of India 1985. Can you imagine a fabled dress called “eklal pishwai”, made for the marriage of a Hyderabad princess  a century ago and weighing 35 kilos? It brocade fabric was decked with pure gold and silver minakar work. Another masterpiece was an old brocade saree woven in gold and silver threads. One Hyderabad noble produced a century-old saris, embroidered with real diamond and pearls. The ratio was that for every kilogram of silver used, there must be 50 grams of gold in the dress.The Festival of India over, the items were returned safely to India and are now in the steel almirahs of their owners. Occasionally, some eminent sari enthusiast is able to persuade the owners to show them in cultural exhibitions.
Other than that, a grand chapter in Indian sari weaving had ended.

In the late 1980’s, art connoisseur Rahul Jain who was also an official at the World Bank, was mesmerised by the richness of these brocade marvels of the Mughal era. He was captivated by their matte texture, and by the fact that they were delicately poised between the definitions of brocade and jewellery. “These woven silks draw their inspiration from the style and weaving techniques of the magnificent ‘cloths of gold’ woven for the courts of Mughal India and Safavid Iran in the 17th and 18th centuries,” marvelled Rahul Jain. He resigned his job, trained himself in USA and learnt  the intricacies of tapestry weaving and returned to India determined to revive this lost art. Jain began by first identifying the constituents of the fabrics from the Mughal period, and then finding the material. A marathon task in itself as the particular twistless silk and absolutely pure zari is not available today.

Unfortunately, there were no written records documenting the technique, so Jain spent time studying whatever specimens were available across India, USA and  UK to  salvage a lost tradition. This meant recreating the complex structure of the textile right from scratch. He combined two  traditions — the Indian and the Persian (similar textiles were to be found in the Safavid courts of Iran).

Another problem was that the art of making gold thread by hand, (98 per cent pure zari, silver thread plated with gold, which again had to be specially manufactured—as the best zari used these days has only 60 per cent to 80 per cent purity content) which gave the soft-muted brilliancy to the minakar saris was irrevocably lost; and Rahul had to use machine-made gold threads. Then again he had to find vegetable dyes, that one could get in Mughal days.  

He also had to refashion a loom to suit his needs, and train the weavers. Finally he started by setting up a loom in a vacant family house in Ghaziabad near Delhi. “I wanted to be in absolute control of the whole process. I admit, that in a sense it is the most degenerate part of the craft as I was not allowing my four craftsmen to do what they like. But, I had a definite objective in mind—to attain that jewellery-like ornamental quality in cloth at the same scale if possible.  And I wanted to achieve it to perfection and as  minakar saris would be unsaleable in modern fashion world,  decided to concentrate on stoles, which are smaller in length”.

It took him three years to reach a satisfactory level. “The thread that we use is sometimes so fine that it is almost invisible,”  informs Rahul. “Weaving such fine material is not the easiest task in the world. The thread tends to sway and snag. The craftsman weave just about an inch a day and it takes about three and a half months to weave one stole”. Martand Singh,  founder member of the Textile Art Society devoted to minakar weaving and a guru of textile arts, says that Jain took ordinary skilled weavers and transformed them into master craftsmen. Take one look at the prices, and you’d probably want to frame the minakar stoles. It could cost you anything between 100000 to 300000 each, depending on the intricacy of the weave.

Yes Rahul Jain’s 36-inch wide, 2.5-metre long silk and gold stoles, are rated by eminent textile experts as being far superior to any surviving examples of Mughal fabric in the world today!  He is a wonder weaver whose pieces have found their way into prestigious places like the Paris-based AEDTA (The Association For The Study of Asian Textiles), the Textile Museum at Washington as well as the private collections of Indophile Krishna Riboud and businesswoman Lekha Poddar. For he is a craftsman, for whose contemporary heirlooms, there is a queue of cognoscente buyers, including royalty and diplomatic-spouses, with whose demands he finds difficult to cope, since each piece takes four months to weave.

Maharaja Features