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“AL” Dyed Textile Tradition Of India From The Designer's Perspective

By Mrs Bina Rao, Creative Bee, India

Indian subcontinent known for its rich textile trade history, has a number of historical traditional techniques and practices still existing in terms of Hand Weaving and Dyeing with the rarest natural ingredients and produces the most exquisite handcrafted cloth. Of course, it is really alarming the way the advent of synthetic and chemical colours is sweeping over these treasures, not only in India but around the world, adding to the “Global Warming” and obviously cause to “Loss of Heritage” and our languishing heritage My presentation briefly shows one such rare natural dye practice in the part of India.

Along the borders of Orissa and Chattisgarh states of Central India, in the district of Koraput, there is a small village “Kotpad”. Across the border there is another village “Nagarnar,” where a tribal community of dyers & weavers live. This community is called “Panika”. This region is also known as Bastar, which is very rich with thick forestation & traditional handicrafts such as tribal Textiles,Terracota & Dokara metal craft. Panika weavers produce textiles with handspun yarn, dyed in the most brilliant natural shades of Red “Al” dye, in extra weft technique, crafting tribal motives, inspired from their native social & cultural background. This 'Al” dye plant/tree also referred as “Indian Mulbary”, botanical name Morinda citrifolia, is also known for its medicinal use in folk & ayurvedic medicinal practice.

'Al' dye is also used by textile artisan communities in other parts of Southeast Asia with different techniques of mordant and dyeing. Al is called “ANGKUDU” in The Philippines and “MENGKUDU” in Sarawak, Malaysia.

In Kotpad, presently only 30 families of weavers survive through this textile craft skill and hold the ancient knowledge of 'Al' dye technique, while the threat of loosing out to the modernization is looming large over them.

As a designer, I am working extensively on revival and development of tribal - tradtional textiles of India. In the year 1996, I visited this village “Kotpad” in Koraput district of Orissa state and have since then been associated with these weavers for stabilizing their production, studying marketability of their products, and designing with a little bit of product diversification, so that they can earn a better livelihood. Creative Bee has been providing constant support in the area of improving their dyeing infrastructure and helping the weavers understand their technique scientifically. Mr Kesav Rao has been conducting orientation programs for them to show how their technique is so rare, and what makes their “Red” colour so rich and why they need to hold on to their ancient practice without getting tempted to use chemical colours for their textiles. In 2003, help came from the Government of India for these weavers where wider looms, dye sheds, etc., were provided and I started designing products for home furnishing. If you touch and feel this texture of uncooked yarn dyed in 'Al' you can see that the texture is more appropriate for home furnishing products than the products for fashion. Of course, for fashion products we have been using finer yarn, which is like diversifying in terms of yarn, but the dye practice remains the same.One can see the “Fashion Collection” which I presented for WEFT Forum 2008. This was just an introduction to the “existence of 'AL' dyed textile weaving” in India. My core presentation is about showing the process of Dyeing, the source of Dye & Yarn, Weaving, Motives of folk lore & End product - all these through a visual journey.