A Georgette Sari in Golden Yellow

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This sari, crafted using a plain but genuine and pure georgette length, is a magnificent piece for a woman’s wardrobe abounding in rare splendour and aesthetic beauty only sometimes seen enshrining a loom’s product. The lustre that the purity of fabric and its gold-like glowing dye breathe apart, it is the designer’s exceptional designing skill and her far greater patience required for rendering a piece like this – tacking on a delicate textile like georgette thousands of tiny trefoil spangles, beads, sequins ... not measurable even in milimeters, that transform it into a piece of art and a proud possession of any indian woman world-over. Suman Kumar, its designer, seems to have thoughtfully chosen golden yellow for the colour of her sari’s base textile, for under the principles of Indian aesthetics it represented royalty : kingship and every aspect of majesty. Thus, not only in its appearance, even aesthetically it revealed great splendour. Apart, she has so conceived her design, its material and motifs, that while their lustre multiplies in the golden glow of the base textile, reflecting in them the beauty and brilliance of the base textile also multiplies. She knows well how a textile’s inherent attributes might be used best.

Various motifs that Suman Kumar has used in designing this sari : a semblence of the traditional butah, floral motifs with petals ranging from four to thirteen, trefoils, spear-heads ..., are traditional breathing a kind of ethnicity and a sense of mystique, though in this traditionalism itself she discovers her distinction and the appeal of her textile. The sari’s golden yellow, close to saffron, abounds in some kind of mysticism not merely because the Vaishnava iconographic tradition reveres yellow as the colour of Vishnu’s apparel and that of his incarnations or is linked with the sun or Agni – fire-god but also because its glow unfolds as the light within : a mystique that yellow alone inspires. It breeds positiveness in mind and in the entire ambience.

The mystique goes farther. The large size butah used for adorning palla – end-part, seems to symbolise a shrine. Compartmentalised, as was a medieval temple in its plan, the butah has the lower part of the periphery designed with corbels representing the elevated entrance, the space inside, Mahamandapa – the principal hall, further inwards, the Mandapa – the inner hall, the inner-most part, the Garbha-graha – sanctum, that the deity as floral image enshrines, and the superstructure : a dome form with finial like pointed apex. The inner-most cell has around a passage for ’parikrama’ – circumambulation, which completes an accomplished temple’s imagery. Usually for adorning the bottom-line along the border Suman Kumar often uses the repeats of the same design motif as she uses for adorning the palla, though in reduced size. In this sari she evades using its repeats and uses instead of it an oval motif with a series of leaves radiating from its outer periphery. Obviously, for propriety she has avoided using around the feet a motif resembling a holy shrine.

For containing the design worked with genuine gold-wire, zircons, coral beads and other material having weight that a light fibre like georgette could not carry the designer has pasted a two inches wide strip of silk, along with a lining of the same dimensions, on borders on the two longer sides, and one, on the breadth, the palla side, for strengthening the concerned areas. A similar silk piece, cut exactly to the size and dimensions of the butah, has been pasted under each of the five butahs, defining the palla. Besides supporting the designs the red of these background strips multiplies the glow of the base textile and the beauty of the design for on the red surface the gold of the rendered motifs : the large butah and the running border design, glows to its optimum.

Besides the five large size butahs adorning the palla, an eight-petalled flower-motif, its petals consisting of gold leaves, and pistil, a zircon-piece, along with the galaxy of trefoil silver spangles scattered all-over, embellish the field. A medium-size butah with pointed ends on longer side, a series of leaf-motifs defining the outer periphery, and a flower and leafy vines, the inside, has been used for adorning the bottom-line along the border. Border-design makes use of simple traditional flower-motives rendered in two forms, a thirteen-petaled, and a four-petaled with a three-leaf motif defining each of the four corners, alternating mutually. These flowers are framed in a rectangular cube which the bold lines consisting of gold-beads bifurcate. Dimonds, contained within a gold-ring, have been used for manipulating the corners of the cubes containing the thirteen-petaled flower-motif. A series of large dots composed of gold spangles socketed in gold-rings flank the border’s edge on either side though on inner side it has in addition also a series of spear-head or flame motifs and a coral-beads line in between.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.

Primary Color Pantone 14-0941 TPX (Beeswax)