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Description

Elongated rectangular wedding shawl made of pale gold wild tussar silk. Faint dark grey-brown bands across length at varying intervals and of differing widths. Left and right sides are trimmed with openwork and tightly woven bands; short pieces of fringe on edges. Top and bottom edges are finished.

Narrative

In 1980, Professor Chandra Mishra, who lives in Puri, acquired this shawl for the donor, from a silk weavers’ guild.

History Of Use

This raw “tussar” (wild) silk wedding shawl would traditionally be worn by a groom at his wedding, as a companion piece to a tussar silk embroidered wedding outfit. Odisha men’s wedding shawls are always left in their natural, undyed colour of pale gold to brown. Today, tussar silk garments are popular for marriages by both grooms and brides, however brides often prefer theirs dyed in vibrant colours.

Specific Techniques

Hand spun and woven silk, by traditional Odisha weavers. The irregularities and imperfections in the yarn and the fabric are created during the spinning and weaving process. The ends of the fabric are always left unfinished for this type of shawl. India is the second largest silk producer, making five varieties. The rarest of these is tussar (raw silk), a non-mulberry silk called 'vanya' that comprises only 2% of Indian-made silk. Tussar production in India is a forest-based industry that, since time immemorial, has relied on tribal populations, sub-tropical forest dwellers who gather and process silkworm cocoons. After gathering the cocoons/larvae of large, mirror-winged moths called Antheraea Mylitta, the single-shelled, oval-shaped cocoons are dried in the sun. After drying, the cocoons are soaked in boiling water to soften them in order to extract the fibers, which are then handspun into threads and loom-woven. Tussar silk is more textured than cultivated or 'mulberry silk' but it has shorter fibers that make it less durable. These fibers occur naturally in a range of colours, hues and sheens from cream/ochre to pale gold and brown. Tribal communities from Bengal State to Andhra Pradesh are still associated with producing tussar, however with deforestation and environmental degradation including the industrialization of forested areas, tussar production is now facing unparalleled threats.