How the Indian patola clothed Southeast Asian kings

India’s exquisite silk Patan patola is well known as a cloth revered in Gujarat, where it has traditionally been woven for hundreds of years. The Salvi community, associated with patola-weaving for generations, weaves the textile using the calculated double-ikat process which involves tying and dyeing both warp and weft yarns to predetermine patterns that intersect on the loom. The resulting textiles — named after Patan, Gujarat where they are made — are intricate, with sharply defined motifs in rich colours.

What might not be as well-known to most people, is that the cloth also had ritual and symbolic significance in places as far away as Indonesia and the Malayan archipelago, where it became the preferred fabric for nobility, priests and shamans.

What’s most surprising about this exchange? The fact that the Dutch East India Company had a major role to play in facilitating it.

Patola textiles were not new to Southeast Asia — they possessed considerable economic value as trade goods in Southeast Asia, even before the arrival of colonial enterprises. As early as the thirteenth century, patolas were exported to the Malayan/Indonesian archipelago where they were called chindé and became markers of status. Records from Ming-period China also mention “flowered sarongs” being worn by the King of Eastern Java — a fabric widely believed to be a patola by scholars. Later, restrictions were placed on who could wear them. In the Javanese courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta, for instance, only the rulers, nobility and high-ranking officials were allowed to wear patola fabrics, with the sole exception being a bride and groom on their wedding day.

Patola textiles also gained ritualistic importance. They were used as hangings in temples in Bali and even as burial shrouds, coffin covers and talismanic fabrics in other local cultures in the region. They even influenced the design of Indonesian textiles, which borrowed not only patterns but also the composition and structure of a patola with its demarcated end pieces, main field and frames.

The demand for patola spurred the production of imitations, both locally in Southeast Asia and from India. When the Dutch East India Company became part of the lucrative trade in Indian textiles in the seventeenth century and recognised how valuable patola was in Southeast Asian islands, they commissioned block- and screen-printed imitations. These were cheaper than woven double-ikat fabrics and catered to mass markets, for whom patola would have been expensive and difficult to obtain. The Dutch, who traded textiles for spices, profited immensely from producing an affordable version of a prestigious and luxury product.

Despite the speed and efficiency in producing these imitations, their design process could never imbue the textiles with the same value as woven patola, which demands rare skills and expertise that take a lifetime to master. From Gujarati brides to Javanese kings, the patola found a place as a covetable and significant object across the world — whether as a painstakingly crafted fabric or even as a block-printed imitation that allowed the masses in Southeast Asian islands to emulate their elite.

Discover Indian Art is a monthly column that delves into fascinating stories on art from across the sub-continent, curated by the editors of the MAP Academy. Find them on Instagram as @map_academy