One of my favourite childhood memories is linked to my mother wearing an orange and blue Kanchipuram sari with rudraksha and creeper motifs along the border and pallu, and looking like a queen, at a family wedding. A lustrous Kanchipuram sari that gets its name from the temple town of Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu, is a prized family heirloom and a statement saris in South India and part of every bride’s trousseau.
Some mothers and grandmothers passed on their loved silk saris created by hundreds of hours of handloom weaving, to their offspring, but down the ages, many owners of these saris disposed them off to vendors for the gold that is woven into them and they were burnt or destroyed. Many others gave away their old saris, not realising their value.
An exhibition at the showroom of the newly opened Tulsi Weaves, on Eldams Road in Chennai, brings antique, handwoven Kanchipuram silk saris, some as old as ninety years, rescued from hawkers and retrieved from old families, to the…