Khesh Cotton Sarees
Posted on July 28 2022
Cotton and Bengal has had a long history together. Amidst all the possible blends of cottons, the most creative varient is found in Shantiniketan. Team Dailybuyys, housed in Kolkata, also have a very close root with Shantiniketan. The land of Rabindranath Tagore, the seat of liberal education through Biswa Bharati University, is also the producer of the most unique weave, Khesh Cotton.
It was in Birbhum we stumbled upon Khesh weaving - a tradition which has been practiced for years. The weaving technique essentially involves tearing old sarees into thin strips - the warp has the new thread and the weft uses the thin strips of sarees. The weavers collect cotton sarees and it is the women who patiently tear the sari into multiple long strips. It is up to the weaver to match the warp with the weft and create designs. The beauty of a Khesh fabric is that the colour of the recycled weft fabric keeps changing, sometimes even within a single meter of fabric and that precisely is the uniqueness of this fabric. These handloom cotton fabrics are hand woven and the asymmetry/ irregularities in the weaves makes them exclusive.
Because of the tradition of khesh weaving in Birbhum in the last many years, a market for old sarees has come up in Amodpur, where old sarees can be bought in bulk by weavers. Many weavers also have their suppliers who gather them from villages, wash them and sell them ready for tearing. Many other weavers depend on householders to give them sarees which get woven into bedcovers for a fee. The weaver needs six sarees for a single bedcover and ten for a double.
The old sarees have to be of cotton in order that they tear easily. Experiments using synthetic sarees have also been undertaken, since the propensity to wear synthetic sarees is on the rise even in villages. But the problem with synthetic sarees is that they cannot be torn by hand and have to be cut by scissors. This increases the time for this process and therefore the cost.
The tearing process which is as labour intensive as weaving is typically done by female members of the weaver’s household. Some shortcuts have been found to make the process less tedious and time consuming. The saree is first torn into five or six parts lengthwise. One end of each part , say about five inches is then torn into strips. The tearer then picks out alternate strips and holds them together in one hand, and the remaining in the other hand. He then pulls in two opposite directions giving him many strips at one go. Typically a saree yields about seventy five to eighty strips.
Dailybuyys is a growing e-commerce platform producing fine and aunthentic cotton Khesh sarees working in absolute collaboration with weavers from Birbhum. Come explore and shop from our widest range of saree collection
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