Venkatgiri, a small town in Tirupati district that has a history stretching back to the 1700s, was formerly well-known for producing fine-count cotton sarees, sometimes referred to as “woven air.” These sarees have borders made entirely of gold khaddi and cotton counts as high as the 200s. In order to revitalise the Venkatgiri cluster, WeaverStory has been collaborating with Tata Trusts’ Antaran for a number of months. In the first stage of this project, team Antaran collaborated with past Venkatgiri saree purchasers and conducted archive and museum research in order to document the revival designs in Andhra Pradesh. The cluster’s lost design language is being revived along with the recreation of these sarees with the help of what’s known to be as The Venkatgiri Revival Project.
Nishant Malhotra, CEO of WeaverStory, points out in an exclusive interview that “Tata Trust had long-term plans for the Venkatagiri project. In order to gather information, they essentially began to establish archives, go over some old designs that were found in a few books, or make contact with persons who had possessed a portion of Venkatagiri throughout their lifetime. Therefore, it was intriguing that Venkatagiri itself was being taken over, as documentation is a crucial component that is lacking in the majority of clusters. As a result, the tradition that you are familiar with erodes with each weaver or craftsman that continues to do so. Thus, the craft involves a number of people. Thus, it’s not only a weaver; you also know how the pattern was intended to be made, how the loom was set up, and what the dyeing and other processes entail. Every situation presents a difficulty. Each of them therefore needs a specific set of skills, and what made them intriguing was that they were prepared to put in the time and energy to have that documented. We have therefore endeavoured to bring back to life a few more weaving traditions in Banaras and other states as well. It was noteworthy that the Tata Sons had started these weaving traditions in the southern region of India and that they had been chronicled.”
The cluster was eventually exposed to the Jamdani weaving technique, which the weavers took up and adapted to become their own. They created a distinctive language of buttas with flora and fauna that covered cotton fabrics in the Jamdani style, taking inspiration from commonplace objects. “Ann buttas” became the nickname for these unusual buttas. In order for the design he selected to succeed, it required a steady market. Therefore, even when it is produced and documented by CSR funding, if there is no means of support, it will remain a one-time event and eventually perish. That is what he kind of did, saying that since that is his area of expertise and he has connections in 20 various countries, Nikhil used to reunite with hands in order to bring that presentation and documentation to life and to an increasing number of individuals, which is how he has been involved in this entire adventure. “While Venkatagiri, originally known as Kalimiri, is known for its weaving and the cluster has a rich history of its own, many of the forms and weaves that I previously mentioned have been lost to time or burned because they were unsure if it was grafts that they had inherited. Some of them, due to their age, had pure zari. Having said that, the tradition for its revival that we carried out was that Venkatagiri was typically worn by very powerful individuals due to its high cost and the usage of gold zaris. As a result, there was a clear distinction that anyone wearing Venkatagiri belonged to the officer class or hierarchy throughout the ecosystem. That’s why I believe Tata Trust also took the initiative to contact the owners of those, working with the Craft Council to gather samples and gain an understanding of their culture.” However, a lot of it cannot be immediately replicated in the current structure for the craftsman’s speed because it requires a lot of work and skill to weave a 300 count cotton sari; as a result, they have progressed him from a 70 to 100 count right now. They therefore have some modern adaptations, but as Nikhil pointed out, they are still in the process of getting there because the handlooms that are currently in use were made using a structure that requires some time to develop because few people are able to create the same handloom using the same structure. They discovered that the Tata Trust was able to find a single individual who, you know, made them a loom. After that individual became skilled enough to utilise the loom to manufacture an increasing amount, they increased the quantity. Therefore, the process of bringing it back will require several levels of intervention, and it will take time. That is not the conclusion.
The Venkatagiri weavers lost contact with their traditional design language due to the introduction of the powerloom, the drop in cotton’s value, and a change in market preference toward Banarasi, Kanchipuram and Paithani patterns. In order to fit within the budget of a typical cotton saree, they were obliged to switch to weaving silks, completely giving up real zari and lowering the quality of their cotton to thicker counts, which ultimately led to their demise. When they decided the designs they wanted to work on and learned the backstories of each design, they came together. The decision to intervene and create something in silk was made jointly since silk is more widely accepted. Moreover, we hear, “Some of the interventions we made included designing the designs in silk rather than cotton to give them a more modern feel, and we thought carefully about the colour palettes we selected, taking into account what is more likely to be worn by people in general and by Kanchivaram wearers in particular. The other aspect is that, as I already mentioned, the majority of empty caskets used to contain solely pure zari, or actual, genuine gold and silver.”
The weavers who have stopped weaving, or those who have always believed that Venkatagiri is no longer alive, are restricted to weaving the standard sarees that they are currently making, which resemble toggles and everything else they weave. They have returned to their own origins and all those things have changed. An increasing number of weavers are being taught how to set up the loom used to make Venkatagiri sarees now. In practice, the social and especially the economic impact will be widely apparent if it becomes a large-scale project, on which they are currently working.
