The Story of Devanshi

Not all saris at Parvai are woven on adai. In fact, given the available skillset in the market today, it is humanly not possible to weave every sari in adai either. While choosing to weave a sari, it is important to decide how it is likely to be executed. It is not uncommon in Kanchipuram to evaluate what an existing loom set-up can deliver and work on a design that fits the loom. This ensures minimal changes to loom set up. However, at Parvai, this decision is always design led – which means we adopt the technique that would best bring the design to life.

Project Devanshi was a precious commission for a patron who was celebrating an important milestone that deserved a faceted brocade. While weavers in Varanasi have been weaving brocades since time immemorial, but that is not a skill-set that comes naturally to weavers in Kanchipuram. If one were to look at archives of weaves from the south, one would be hard-pressed to spot brocades & faceted weaves.

One of the distinguishing feature about Parvai is our eagerness to work on commissioned projects. And we are not talking about changing the body color or minor changes to pallu formats, but when we talk about commissioned work, we literally customise everything from the border & pallu motifs, color schemes and more. The other special feature is our policy to weave exactly one each of such saris. This makes your commissioned work truly exclusive. We might make a few more pieces of the same sari, the exact commission won’t be re-made or sold to another patron. This ensures your sari is truly only yours.

But how does this policy translate into loom requirements is interesting. Most faceted weaves are woven using a customised reed which allows for the body to be less dense and the border to be dense. This model allows for easier pleating of these saris and is highly preferred by customers for big days. However, doing this also saves up on silk & zari cost and is hence a cost-effective idea. The disadvantage of such a loom arrangement however is the fact that it does not allow us to make much modifications to border size. Which is why, most bridal saris might vary in design but follow a certain template when it comes to border size ratios. While the standard reed size in Kanchipuram is 38, it is not uncommon to use 36 for brocades. At Parvai, we stick to 40 kunjam reed even for our brocades. This makes our saris densely woven & are well appreciated by our patrons.

This policy of not compromising on weave integrity & density adds a unique dimension to our jacquard requirements & loom weight. While an average jacquard sari uses 150-200 hooks, Devanshi for instance uses 480 hooks in the border, 240 in the body and 240 more in the pallu area. Not only does this make it a complicated weave but also a heavy loom to move. Such a loom when operated by hand can weigh from 50 to 100 kgs easily. This is another reason why many brocades woven today are done on mechanised looms.

After a lot of struggles to establish this project, the first sari was woven in 2022 and since then, we have managed to produce around 12 saris. Every sari takes two months despite the jacquard usage due to the complexity of designs. Plus we have made changes to the loom from korvai to non-korvai and even varied the border size. The result is a loom that has been active for two years now.

The story of Devanshi is one filled with rich learnings about technique, silk usage, loom set-up, weaver skill-sets and more. We believe the bigger impact is being able to find a market for these handwoven saris in a market filled with brocades of all quality & grades. This comes with education & transparency. The other big win is to be able to convince the current crop of weavers to take up such work and ensure commercial viability of such projects.

Presenting to you, Project Devanshi

Loom Details:

Material: Pure mulberry silk & 3g Zari

Jacquard Usage:

Border: 480 Hooks

Body: 240 Hooks

Pallu: 240 Hooks

Reed: 40 Kunjam Reed of uniform width