Cost estimation and Technology of Banaras Hand loom [Pit loom]
Introduction
Handloomsare widely used across India to produce silk fabric. Varanasi silk fabric especiallybanarasi silk sarees are widely popular in the country as well as in outsideworld for its uniqueness in design and brilliant look. Varieties of populardesigns are produced by the expert weavers of Varanasi such as Katan, Satin,Chiffon etc., using handloom usually termed as pit loom. There areapproximately 34000 numbers of pit loom available in Varanasi which is mostspecific in construction and mode of operation of the loom differs fromhandlooms available in other part of the country. The uniqueness of these loomis the production of specific design with 3/4 different weft thread and arepopularly known as Varanasi design. Although Varanasi pit loom is very popularamongst the weavers of these areas, the information regarding technicalspecification material used and costing of these looms are not available forfurther study. Therefore a survey across Varanasi has been done for costestimation and technical details of Varanasi handloom and the finding arepresented in this paper.
Thesurvey period is from the month of September 2010 to October 2010. Areasvisited are Lohta,Natiimili Kotwan, Ramangar, Saranth, Hirayanpur, Pandeypur, Bikapur (Jagatpur),Bajardiya, and Pili Koti.
The authors D.Sargunamani,Jayanta Ghose & Dinesh Tomar are associated with Textile TestingLaboratory, CSRTI, CSB, Varanasi, U.P, India and Shambulingappa andB.Hubbali are with CSTRI, CSB, Bangalore, Karnataka, India
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