The Panchachuli peaks are a group of five snow-capped Himalayan peaks lying at the end of the eastern Kumaon region, near the Dugtu village in Darma valley. Weaving is undoubtedly one of those traditional crafts that are deeply connected with the lives of the local hill people and their rich cultural heritage.
The Himalayan climate of Uttarakhand and the local sheep-rearing practices have largely contributed to the natural development of the woolen industry in the region. The weavers are mostly rural women from hill tribes who produce beautiful hand-woven products with the help of surprisingly primitive tools and techniques. It is simply amazing to see how the people in these Himalayan villages have been quite successful in keeping alive some of their age-old craft techniques and methods.
Panchachuli Artisans Community
Largely, it is the Bhotia Himalayan weavers community that dominates the weaving industry of Uttarakhand. Apart from the Bhotiyas, there are also other weaver communities like the Rompas and the Kolees in the area. The industry turns out a great variety of textile products ranging from routine objects to more specialized items like shawls or carpets.
Every year, the nomadic Bhotiya weavers spend the winter months in Dunda weaving their clothes and the summer months selling those clothes in different seasonal fairs and tourism sites of Uttarakhand or harvesting fields in Harsil. While in Dunda of the Uttarkashi district, they weave gorgeous traditional patterns on their crude upright or pit looms, using Charkha-spun wools. Traditionally, the Bhotiya weavers rear their own sheep for wool in the grazing plains of Harsil. In the winter, when the sheep grow fat and have fully grown hair, the Bhotiyas come down to Dunda to begin their weaving activities. The Dunda weaving cluster in Uttarakhand is famous for the carpets and pashmina shawls made by the Bhotiya weavers.
The rugs and pashmina shawls of Munsyari are also widely acclaimed. Like Dunda, it is another significant site of traditional Bhotiya weaving. Munsyari produces some of the finest cashmere in the world. The dunn which is a type of rug and the thulma – a unique bedspread – made by the Bhotiya weavers of this small Uttarakhand town deserves much appreciation for their exotic beauty.
Raw material
Wool
It is the main foundation of all the products woven by the Bhotias. It is purchased from the local market of Dharchula and Munsyari in the Kumaun region of Uttarakhand. The wool goes through pre-processes before getting ready for weaving. Bhotias shear wool from the sheep when their hairs are fully grown at the end of summer when the tribes come downhills.
HAND SPUN TIBETAN SHEEP WOOL
As the name suggests, this long fiber and very warm wool come from the Tibetan plateau, a high-altitude region of the Himalayas. Tibetan sheep wool is easily handspun by local people, gets softer with use, and is very durable. We often blend Tibetan sheep wool with other fibers, including merino wool and silk.
HARSIL WOOL
Harsil wool, which is produced in Garhwal, another region in the state of Uttarakhand, is spun locally.
AUSTRALIAN MERINO WOOL
This wool is produced in India as well as imported from Australia. It is softer than Tibetan wool and is used to create blends with different silks for a range of softer products.
Silk
silk cocoons are collected in the wild, from local plant species. Silk yarns vary in their method of production.
HAND-SPUN TUSSAR SILK
Originally, tribal communities collected cocoons of tussar silk in the forests of Central and Eastern India. Avani purchases tussar silk yarn from other parts of the country, supporting the livelihood of many Indian spinners. Tussar silk has a unique, pebbly texture and is naturally beige in color.
HAND-SPUN ERI SILK
The cocoons of eri silk are collected in the wild from castor plants in local villages. Alternatively, eri silk worms are fed on leaves picked from these castor plants. Eri silk is always hand spun (thus non-violent), and is unique in its natural insulating properties.
HAND AND MACHINE-SPUN MUGA SILK
Muga is the most expensive and the finest of India’s wild silks. It is collected from the forests in the Northeast, where its host trees, Litchia polyantha, and Michelis bombacina, are found. It is naturally gold in color, with an extremely rich texture. The yield of muga silk is very low, making it extremely expensive. Aside from our hand-spun muga silk, we also purchase reeled muga silk from producers in Assam to meet our production demands.
Linen
Avani now works with a specialized range of products in pure linen as well as linen blended with silk and wool. The raw material comes from Belgium and is processed and spun in India.
Pashmina
Avani produces a small range of goods using pashmina purchased as a raw material from Tibet and Ladakh, India.
Dyes
The use of natural dyes is traditional in all artisan communities. In Kumaon, this skill has existed in the Shauka community for hundreds of years. However, mass-produced, cheap, chemically dyed products are causing this skill to slowly disappear, leading to higher costs and depleting markets. Traditionally, the color palette in natural dyes was limited to browns, yellows, and pink.
Process
Separating
The fine wool is separated by hand. It is a complicated and difficult process, which produces 40% of wool in total.
Washing
After the separation process, the wool is washed by hand. The women lay the wet balls on a kind of sieve and let them dry in a sunny place.
Carding
After it has been washed, the wool is dehaired again. This time mechanically and then carded. The machines were specially engineered in Scotland. Any remaining impurities in the raw wool can only be removed mechanically ensuring that only fine soft pashmina wool is left.
Spinning
It is done on a traditional spinning wheel or Charkha (Bageshwari Charkha) using Taku or Takli after which the yarn becomes ready to be woven.
Dyieng
The spun wool is dyed before knitting and weaving. only natural ingredients are used in dyes, which produce different colors depending upon the concentration used. The range of colors of hand-mixed dyes may vary as they are produced by natural processes.
Weaving and knitting
After dyeing, wool is woven or knitted. For weaving mainly two types of looms are used which include the Pit loom and the vertical upright loom.
Finishing
When the fabric is ready, it goes through finishing processes such as brushing which is done with the help of a carding brush to give a felt-like effect on the surface of the fabric.
Made-to-order products are then embroidered by women who attend an additional training course to their two-year apprenticeship.
Designs and motifs
The serenity and the grace of the Himalayas are perfectly matched by the traditional textile designs which are handed down from generation to generation. At times, the motifs used by the traditional weavers of Uttarakhand show interesting influences of the neighboring states of Tibet, Nepal, and China. However, in spite of these influences, the traditional textiles of Uttarakhand always reflect a unique ethnic character of their own.
Colors
This traditional craft has both kinds of color palettes which involves shades of neutrals as well as vibrant ones. Neutral colors like brown, grey, white, and cream are mainly used in the products like Chutka, Thulma, Pankhi, etc. Vibrant colors like yellow, red, ochre, blue, green, etc are often used in Dans (carpets).
Motifs
Different motifs like dragons, flora-fauna, animals, insects, and a few geometrical motifs can be seen on Dans while other products may have stripes, checks or they may have no motifs on them but just a beautiful texture due to the techniques used while weaving.
Revival and Exhibition
This is a product of Indian visionary Mukti Datta and her efforts to transform the lives of women living near the Binsar Forest at the base of the Panchachuli Mountains. Today over eight hundred women from a total of thirty-two villages in the region are involved in the processing of raw materials, and the production of high-quality woven and knitted products. The main weaving center is in Almora, where around 300 women from surrounding villages come to work.
Ten years later the co-operative employs over 750 local women who work processing the raw materials, then dye, hand spin, weave, or knit and beautifully embroider a vast range of luxury accessories and fabrics. In 2006 the products were selected by UNESCO for their prestigious ‘Seal of Excellence for Handicrafts award.
Part of the success of the Panchachuli women weavers can be attributed to the Danny Kaye and Silvia Fine Foundation and Jan Jagaran Samiti, a non-profit organization that has worked on reviving the traditional handloom in Almora and Pithoragarh districts of Kumaon since 1988.
References
TEXTILES OF UTTRAKHAND – Textile Magazine, Textile News, Apparel News, Fashion News (textilevaluechain.in)
ECHOES OF THE VOID…… – PANCHACHULI WEAVES OF KUMAUN REGION (UTTARAKHAND) (wordpress.com)
PANCHACHULI – Artisan Stories, House of MG (weebly.com)
Textiles | Avani (avani-kumaon.org)
