Pakistan's handloom weavers have been spinning their magic weaves for generations. The subcontinent has one of the richest and oldest textile traditions in the world.
Pakistani craftsmen continue to capture the spirit of the traditional designs through bold use of colours and textures. The hand-spun cottons and silks produced today carry on centuries-old designs, even as they incorporate modern techniques and experiment with new styles.
Pakistani cotton can be traced to pre-historic times. Excavations at Mohenjodaro and Harappa (2,500-1,500BC) revealed that the inhabitants of the Indus Valley not only cultivated cotton but also knew the craft of weaving and dyeing.
This is evident from the discovery of a dyer's workshop at Mohenjodaro — the fragment of cloth found there indicates that woven cotton was dyed with madder root.
Indigoferra tinctoria, the ancient plant that provides indigo dye, also grew in abundance on the banks of River Indus.
The craft of weaving and dyeing has evolved over time, but the traditional dyeing methods have remained more or less unaltered over the last millennium.
Even today, despite the onslaught of synthetic dyes, natural vegetable-dyes such as indigo, madder, pomegranate, lac, walnut, tea and catechu, continue to be used for dyeing hand-spun fabrics.
The province of Sindh in particular has a rich tradition of dyeing and block printing, with many of the traditional block printing and dyeing workshops still located near the Indus River, as they were in the ancient days.
The ajrak, a woven cloth dyed in rich crimson and deep indigo represents the unique craftsmanship of the Sindhi artisans. Dating back to the ancient Indus Valley civilization, the ajrak is still an essential part of the Sindhi apparel. Men use it as a turban or cummerbund and women use it as a dupatta, shawl and chaddar.
The authentic ajrak is printed on both sides by a method called resist printing. The printing is done manually using hand-carved wooden blocks.
Unfortunately, today this ancient family craft, which has passed down from father to son through generations, is in a state of decline because the process is highly elaborate and the profit margins are low.
Hand embroidery is another tradition that is struggling to survive in an age dominated by machine embroidery.
Pakistan has a rich heritage of hand embroidery — each province has its own unique style. Phulkari, the most distinguished embroidery from Punjab where it was probably introduced by the tribes migrating from Central Asia, dates back to ancient times.
Literally meaning ‘flower work', its name reflects the repeat floral patterns embroidered in untwisted floss silk on home-spun cotton (khaddar). The phulkari stitch derives its richness from the unique placement of the darning stitch that may be vertical, horizontal and diagonal, but never curved. Embroiderers work on the reverse of the fabric.
A more elaborate type of phulkari work is called bagh (garden) — here the designs are so densely embroidered that the ground cloth becomes invisible.
The floss silk is worked in straight surface darning stitches to cover the entire material. Baghs are usually worked in one or two colours only — the play of light on the smooth silk embroidery creates pattern and contrast and imparts a shimmering soft feel to the textile.
For centuries, the women in the villages of Punjab have made embroidered head-cloths, skirts, shawls, bed-spreads, carpets and wall-hangings using phulkari. In rural areas, a young girl's skill at phulkari would influence her marriage prospects.
Phulkari was a part of a girl's trousseau that was painstakingly prepared through years — the quality and quantity of phulkaris and baghs given during marriage determined the social status of the family.
Corners of the shawls and duppattas would be deliberately embroidered with a flawed design (nazar buti) to ward off evil. However, like many other traditional crafts, phulkari too is sadly a dying art today.
The traditional weaving and embroidery in Pakistan transcend state boundaries — for instance the phulkari embroidery is not just confined to Punjab — even women from Sindh and the North-West Frontier Province make beautiful phulkari creations.
Sindh has a rich tradition of needlework and, even today, embroidery is the main source of livelihood for the rural Sindhi women, who make ingenious use of mirrors, threads, beads, ribbons, coins and sequins etc to decorate cholis, kurtas, duppattas and caps.
The style of embroidery varies from region to region — in north, the embroidery has a distinct Baloch influence and in Thar it is decorated with patterns of Kutchh and Gujrat.
The North-West Frontier Province, bordering on Afghanistan, has been influenced by trade with Turkistan and China.
Textiles here reflect a mix of Afghani and Pakistani tradition with a focus on phulkari and other embroidery. Unique local styles of embroidery still survive in more isolated areas.
Again, embroidery is an activity undertaken primarily by women, who embroider garments for their families. Designs may feature medallions and the typical ‘ram's horn' pattern.
Baluchistan, which is the largest province in Pakistan, is famous for its rich nomadic culture. Embroidery forms a part of domestic tradition of all three major ethnic groups in the rural areas of the province and is the main source of income for the rural women.
Each tribe has its original symbol of motifs and colours. These embroideries use embellishments such as beads, mirrors, threads, golden and silver kallabattoo, ribbons, shells, coins, sequins, and semiprecious stones.
Valued for their intricate designs and workmanship, the embroidery of Balochistan is so fine that it gives the impression of being machine-made.
Sadly, the rich textile legacy of Pakistan is in the danger of dying out. Even as the Pakistani fashion comes of age with trendy boutiques displaying a dazzling array of stylish clothes in scintillating colours and designs, the fate of the ancient textile heritage of the country hangs in balance.
There remain only a handful of block-print workshops employing the ancient and timeless techniques that date back to the Indus Valley civilization.
The hand-spun silk floss is slowly giving way to machine-made threads and the vegetables dyes are now being replaced by the synthetic dyes.
As Pakistani textiles prepare to carve a strong niche in the international arena, it is time to revive and resuscitate the ancient crafts on the verge of breathing their last.
