Banaras Silk (and a Marble Map)

Friday, 13 February 2015

Banaras (aka Varanasi, aka Kashi) has been renowned for silk for millennia. We got an opportunity to visit a silk fabric factory and see brocades being made. The output is measured in inches per day.

Looms for weaving Banaras brocades. The front loom is the traditional method that takes two people to operate. One man does nothing but adjust the strings to pull up specific threads to make the design. The next two looms use punch cards to semi-automate the intricate weaving.

A sample of brocades in a bed cover.

Totally unrelated to silk: Earlier in the day we visited the Bharat Mata ("Mother India") temple where the worship focus is a marble 3-D map of India.

Finished in the 1930s, the marble relief map of India is quite interesting. As an object of worship, it's a bit strange.