“Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold”, Muga makes a journey from the wild into the skilled hands of spinners of Assam. Filaments of gold are extracted from the reeled cocoons simultaneously being twisted into plied yarn.
Muga is the rarest known wild silk in the world. The ones who has experienced pure Muga will never fail to identify pure from among the others, because that golden hue of Muga is incomparable to any other, giving it a distinct identity. It is rightly expressed as thread of gold by many poets of Assam, so I choose to call this shawl xün. When Muga is getting hand spun and woven, it is as if the whole house of mud walls begins to glisten like gold. I have seen the face of weavers glow too.
What is so magical about Muga? What makes it so revered as a silk? What makes it glow in its original sheen even after decades of use? What gives it that fragrance that goes beyond time?
Perhaps, the silkworms that make this silk are in tune with nature. In the wild, upon the trees, the silkworms in their quietness, make their cocoons. No noise. No dirt. No pollution. With only passerby birds as impended danger, their lifecycle with nature is intimate.
This intimacy perhaps keeps the secret of the ethereal nature of this silk.
With Muga being so special, I always find Ghicha of Muga to be a perfect companion with its textured surface. As smooth the Muga, that textured is Muga Ghicha. This marriage of two is a delight to bind together revealing the under layers of many potentialities of Muga.
Spinners from Gogamukh of upper Assam hand spun muga yarn. This region is known for its quality yarn. So I decided to carry it in my back pack to Arunachal Pradesh so that Tai Khampti weavers could interweave some magic with their weaving skills.
This delightful combination of Muga, Muga Ghicha and weaves from Tai Khampti tribe forms the core of the Sari. The borders that binds this subtlety is Eri Silk, Indigo dyed, hand spun without charkha, and hand woven on throw shuttle loom of Assam.
To a collector’s heart this sari is beyond time and age. It is a Gold Sari! It is Xün Xaari!
The blouse fabric for this Sari is Lac dyed Eri silk handspun yarn woven into a beautiful textured weave on throw shuttle loom.
“All that is gold does not glitter;
not all those who wander are lost;
the old that is strong does not wither;
deep roots are not reached by the frost..”
― J.R.R. Tolkien