The natural dyed orange with charcoal hues reminds me of the time spent near the fireplaces in the last decade. So many home in the remoteness and each one carried one commonality- the fireplace. It was their kitchen, meeting place, resting space. I carry some of the best memories of my travels around the fireplace, a choukha.

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About Eri silk and natural dyeing

1) Home reared Eri silkworms make their cocoons. The rearer collects those cocoons and hands them over to the yarn spinner.

2) The yarn spinner boils (degumming), washes, flattens the cocoons into fibre cakes. The fibre cakes are then mounted on a light wood stick to start the hand spinning of this fibre based silk. No charkha, no mechanised equipment, just a gentle dance of hands twisting the yarn while pulling them from their condensed form in the cocoon. A stone weight spindle keeps turning as the spinner keeps twisting the fibre. When sufficient amount of yarn has been spun, it is rolled into hanks and sent to the weaver.

3) Weaving is primarily woman’s domain in Assam, where the traditional throw shuttle looms are mounted between four pillars dug solid into the flat mud ground. Eri silk’s hand spun fibre involves an intricate warping process. This delicately slub yarn is more or less irregular in size leading to a completely manual process of heddle-making and yarn joining. At no point, the weaver can loose their attention for gentleness while weaving this yarn.

If the yarn is dyed first then the woven fabric is ready at this stage. If the fabric is to be dyed directly, then after weaving, fabric is ready to be sent for the next stage that is dyeing.

Choukha is one of a kind textile designed to highlight a unique coming together of various techniques and creativity of handcraft. This design will not be recreated.