CHRONICLES OF TALES

  Craft & Weaving The 'kuttu' technique — weaving in darkness by touch alone Some master weavers in Kanchipuram deliberately work before dawn, in rooms that are still dark, feeling their way through the first hours of the saree's construction by touch rather than sight. What they say about it has never been written...

  Craft & Weaving Why Uppada sarees feel lighter than air — the weave count secret A saree that can fold small enough to fit inside a matchbox, woven from a thread count denser than almost any other handloom fabric in India. The lightness is not despite the density. It is created by it...

  Craft & Weaving The zari wrapping machine that took 200 years to evolve From hand-hammered silver bars beaten flat by a craftsman's mallet, to electroplating tanks and precision wire-drawing dies. The metallic thread running through every Kanjivaram border has a manufacturing history as long as the Industrial Revolution itself — and the hand...

  Craft & Weaving How a master weaver 'reads' a finished saree to find errors Touch, pull, light angle, sound, and sight — in that order. The inspection of a finished Kanjivaram saree by a master weaver takes less than five minutes and reveals every flaw that fourteen days of weaving might have produced....

  Craft & Weaving The geometry behind Kanchi temple border calculations The stepped triangle you see on a Kanjivaram border is not decorative inspiration loosely drawn from a temple tower. It is the temple tower — translated tier by tier, proportion by proportion, into thread counts and weft rows. The weavers are applying architecture....