Mangalagiri

Mangalagiri weave is loved and treasured among textile lovers because of its simplicity and comfort that it brings. This textile is produced in a town also named Mangalagiri in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. As you enter the town, you come across beautiful architectures of ancient temples, one of them is Sri laxmi narasimha swamy temple. The town is well known for both, its temples and sarees. It is believed that Mangalagiri weaving tradition is as old as 400 years.

Plain solid colours, no motifs on the body and a typical border design called Nizam border can be considered as defining features of Mangalagiri. Along with Nizam border, there's another variation called as temple border which is typical in Mangalagiri. Weavers nowadays also produce sarees with no borders. There are few different weaving techniques in Mangalagiri called as thick dent, loose dent and missing checks(lookwise similar to Kota Doria). 'Dent' indicates the gaps/spaces. The loose dent and missing checks techniques were introduced to make the saree lighter and more breathable for everyday wear. Mangalagiri is woven predominantly with pure cotton but silk-cotton and pure silk options are also practiced by weavers these days. 

A missing checks temple border Mangalagiri saree

A room full of pit looms

Mangalagiri weaving process is done majorly on pit loom which is a loom situated on the ground with a pit. There are several pre-loom stages involved in getting the warp and weft ready for the loom, right from cleaning the yarn, street warping, weft winding etc. 

To give a basic idea, Warp and Weft are two main components in Handloom. Warp = vertical/lengthwise threads and Weft = horizontal/crosswise threads or threads across the width. Weft goes through Warp on the loom and that is how textiles are woven.

Shuttle - a device which carries threads of the weft yarn

Shuttle is a device that carries a bobbin on which weft threads are wound. As the weavers pull the strings above, shuttle moves across the width of the fabric. In Mangalagiri, each weaver keeps a bowl of water next to them, in which they soak weft bobbins. This gives strength to the threads so that they don't break during the process of weaving. 

As mentioned above, one of the important pre-loom stages in handloom is Street Warping. It is a painstaking task of getting the warp yarn ready for loom. Street warping is usually carried out by a group of 3-5 artisans on a street near to the looms.

Yarn is tightly stretched out and untangled. It is combed to make it even. Broken or weak threads are either removed or knotted back together. Artisans also apply some form of starch like rice starch to add strength to the yarn. Once done, the yarn is rolled up and given to the loom for the weaving to begin. 

This stage prepares the yarn to withstand the rigorous process of weaving on handloom. One such session of street warping in Mangalagiri makes 25 meters of yarn ready which is used to weave around 4 sarees.

The joy of finishing the task of Street Warping

It is mesmerizing to observe the process and understand that artisans carry out numerous elaborate tasks for a beautiful piece of textile come to life.