The Salvi family from Gujarat has also established the Patan Patola Heritage museum, where they conduct live demonstrations of the painstaking weaving process
Promotion
‘Padi Patole bhaat, phate pan fitey nahin’. As per this famous Gujarati saying patola cloth may tear, but the design and colour never fades. It aptly describes the true nature of the 11-century craft of ‘patola’ – a double-ikat woven sari usually made from silk in Gujarat’s Patan town.
The process of double ikat develops a design on the warp (vertical) and weft (horizontal) sides, thus locking the colours in a way that they never wane.
The word patola derives from the Sanskrit word ‘pattakulla’, which means a silk fabric. Though patola has strong connections with Gujarat, the earliest mentions can be found in South India as per the religious text, Narasimha Purana. It mentions women wore it for…