Experiments with Jamdani (1)

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This is the first of a 3 part project, with Taneira, a TITAN comapany.
I was working for them to Design a Collection of Experimental Jamdani saris for the festive season.
My process began with studying Jamdani and its existing visual language and motif library to understand the craft and start imagining the possibilities.

The above illustrations have been borrowed from the document Jamdani Weaving Tradition of Burdwan by Anahita Ginwala.
During my research, I noticed that the motifs, particularly the traditional Tirchha motif reminded me of cloud formations I had been seeing around me. So I dug in a little deeper and found that the Jamdani motifs not only imitated the striation of clouds, but the delicate muslin fabric that Jamdani was done was also known as Baft hawa, i,e. a delicate breeze was had this incredible lightness and transparency.

Drawing from this, I chose my inspiration for the festive collection as the Grand phenomenon of sunrise. A symbol of hope, positivity, light and new beginnings. Significant in all cultures, and endlessly beautiful.
Along with the inspiration board on the bottom left, I also chose the Japanese graphic artist, Kiyoshi Awazu's vibrant posters as style inspiration.
Bold stripes, Gradients, Abstraction and simple forms.

I then began ideating about the different ways the Traditional Jamdani motifs and layouts could be translated into contemporary motifs for the collection. I Explored cloud patterns and formations, Gradients and forms.

Just as a sample, to be able to visualise what it could look like when woven, I embroidered some simple motifs on some hand painted fabric.
After this, I headed to Nutan Phulia, a Jamdani cluster in Krishnanagar, West Bengal for the Sampling.

The Nutan Phulia Tantubay Samabay Samiti Office on the left, the kindly man incharge of the overflowing yarn room who helped me pick out yarns for sampling.

Warping and Bobbin winding, for a half silk, half cotton warp.

Setting up the warp and the loom. An expert weaver, Narayan, was assigned to work on this with me. He was as enthusiastic about exploring the limits and possibilities of this craft as I was. It was an incredible 3 weeks, where we co-created an absolutely beautiful sample. The deatails and explorations are as follows.

While making the sample, I was able to narrow down the colour palette and decided to go ahead with a delicate China silk warp.

In traditional Jamdani, which is a continuous extra weft technique, the extra weft winds through the warp and weft of a fabric, creating a delicate pattern. The loops of the extra weft always come on the back side of the fabric and since the motifs are so small and delicate, are hardly noticeable. I chose to use that loop as a design element, bringing it to the front of the fabric, mimicking the roundness and the shapes created by a cloud. By essentially deconstructing and enlarging a traditional motif.

Some of the graphic, minimal motifs i was exploring the represent clouds and the sun in an abstract manner.

We tried a variation of stripes, and precise gradients, in various colours and thicknesses. Literal depictions of a sun rising from in between mountains.

The loops here, are being used as a textural element by making them slightly larger than usual, by also playing with the thickness of the extra weft used. I also used a simple gradient of yellow to orange.

Yellow was added around an organic white motif, to imitate the sunlight peeking through from behind the clouds, creating a literal silver lining. Unfortunately, this technique, while executed well, looked quite clumsy visually and didnt convey the lightness and the magic of the actual cloud + sunlight.
The same intention as the above exploration, the exploration below is white motifs on a transparent china silk base with delicate golden zari depicting the sunlight, translates the lightness, floaty-ness and delicacy much better.

An intricate tapestry sample, depicting the sun and a few soft clouds about it. While this sample is beautiful, unfortunately tapestry is incredibly time consuming and would not have been feasible for this project.

The samples below are explorations in Matka silk. Gradients, transparency, extra weft motifs and stripes.

(above) Matka silk weft on a china silk warp creating beautiful peek-a-boo stripes, like sunlight peeking through from behind clouds.
(below) A beautiful gradient of yellows, oranges, reds and pinks melting into one another.

White Jamdani cloud motif on a cloudy grey matka silk base.
(below) Delicate zari motifs in silver and gold sparkling from a dark blue matka silk base.

A delicate yellow to red gradient with a minimal abstract motif of a sun from behind some clouds. You can see the marked difference between the cotton warp (left side of image) and the silk warp (right side) the cotton mutes the colours and the silk warp is essentially transparent.