Chandra Jain’s ‘River Weaves’ | 20 years of Benarasi Passion

In the latest season of the hit comedy drama The bear, Alpana singh, a chicago-based sommelier of Indian origin appearing as herself, raather petically describes a bottle of wine as “a liquid snapshot of time”. The wine, she explains, captures “Everything that was happying for that year, what the summer was like, what the rains were like”.

A banarasi textile isn’t very different; Just tweak the single year to millennia. If banaras is a right older than history, as mark twain said, its handloom weaves are not too far behind. Among India’s Most Storied Textiles – as also among the most revived and most recorded – they control multiple layers of history, heritage, innovation, reinvestment. They tell of ancient trade with china, where its mainstay mulberry silk came from, they showcase mughal influences in their brocade motifs, and they talk of changing talks as passings and subtle zari Gave way to bright wedding-redy colors and all -over jangla (From Jungle) Work at the turn of the century.

That was the time, in fact, that lucknow-born chandra jain turned away from the banarasi altogethr, despite an in-weborn love for Indian textiles. “What was available simply Didn’T match up to the saris i’d grown up seeing in my family,” She says. Then, in 2002, I happy to meet a master weaver in varanasi. I was carrying some old samples and I asked Commensurarate Price Points. “

At the same time, she learn, the weaving Community was more than ready to take up the challenge of recreating work of older standards – as long as they didnless’t to be responsible for marketing it. Thought Jain Had No Plans of Building A Brand, She Bladn Son Opportunity Pass. Over the Years, She has taken her small, high-end revival collections to select clients all over the country under the label kimkhab.

Next Week, Jain’s two-decade-old passion for the banarasi finds expression in River weavesA first-off-Id-Kind exhibition in her adopted home, Bengaluru. Designed by siddhartha das studio, the display promises all the gravitas of a museum and none of its stuffiness; INTEAD, the focus will be on storytelling, tracing the journey of the silk from the cocoon to the loom. “And that’s partly the reason why we are opening this in Bengaluru – after all, karnataka is India’s largest producer of Silk, and the origin of the country’s Own Silk Route,” Says the SIPUGEGENARIAN.

A banarasi sari in progress

Going back to the original

To be installed across 2,000 sq.ft. At the Bangalore International Center, the exhibition will comprise several broad, visually strong sections. Using specially commissioned art, photos and literature, River weaves Will look to recreate the entrance ecosystem of the banarasi weave to build awareness of the months of effort on the part of multiple people that go into the finished product. “My Master Wever Once Counted 40 People who Contributed to the Yarn Before His karigars even touched it, “Says jain, a long-time executive committee member of the crafts council of karnataka.

Of the various sections of River weaves – The exhibition is dedicated to the Ganga, on with banks the craft has thought for centuries – the one that is sure to draw the cognosynti is the showcase of natural dys. Jain worked with natural dyes expert jagada rajappa to re-antroduce colors extracated from sources thought as manjishtha (Indian Madder), IndiGo, Onion Peels and henna“These were the original shades of banarasis, before the demand green for chemically produced colors,” She says.

The exhibition has a showcase of natural dyes

Seated in her impecccable decorated living room in Indiagar, jain unfurls a lustrous peachy-pink silk with a narrow border and a beauty Pallu With real silver Zari. The color is derived from lac, she informs me. It’s a shade in a banarasi that I last saw in my mum’s wardrobe, in a sari dating back probably to the 1960s. The age-old discontinous kadwa zari butis (One of the two Principal Techniques of Banarasi Weaves, these extra-sheft motifs are woven individully) Flat across the body of the body of the sari with a three-dimensional effect outcome of jamdaniAlso an extra-wast weaving technique). The underside is as neat as the front.

Chandra jain

Passing the parcel

Even as i pore over the exquisite workmanship of the saris – perfect paisleys in one, a strip of jangla Work in another, beautiful koniyas (Corner Motifs, A Speciality of Banarasis) in a third – I wonder how to square jain’s revival work with, say, the popularity of the banarasi sari, as evidence in social means Trend on Instagram for Several Years Till Its Leader Went Off the Platform). Jain Acknowledges That The Banarasi, By and Large, is Much Better off than many other weaves in the country: its status as wedding or special Occination Wear, and ITS SUCESS In Light, Easier-to-Drape and Translucent Fabrics Like kora and organza have found takers amon new sari patrons. “But unless people know what the craftsmen are capable of, this kind of fin work will die out,” She says.

A weaver in banaras

Jain sees herself as a custodian of this living, Breathing Textile Legacy, “Passing the parcel” of the heroitage weave to the next generation. It is in this spirit that she tells herveers to feel free to share the revival designs with other customers, and hopes to take River weaves To other citations in India and maybe even abroad. “These are not my designs,” She says Emphatically. “These control centuries of thought.”

River weaves opens at the bangalore international center on August 14.

The writer and editor is based in Bengaluru.

Published – August 09, 2025 08:18 AM IST