Born in Banaras in 2016, Tilfi is known for its handwoven textiles and handmade products, rooted in the region’s artisanal traditions, preserving heritage and fostering a strong sense of cultural identity. In keeping with its preoccupation with the transmission of heritage crafts, Tilfi has launched two new series of handwoven saris and lehengas under the collections Charbagh and An Artist’s Legacy. We speak with Aditi Chand, CEO and co-founder, Tilfi, about the collections, preserving heritage and promoting handloom.
Tell us about the Charbagh collection.
Developed over two years, Charbagh is a carefully contemplated and considered collection that pays homage to Mughal art and its extraordinary grandeur. Charbagh’s saris are handloom marvels that value colour balance, minute details and intricacy of Mughal miniature paintings. Each piece requires an immense amount of technical skill. Each element of patterns on the saris has been individually woven, some incorporating as many as 12 colours and requiring up to 80 hand movements for a single line of weaving. Charbagh’s lehengas are made of pure tissue paired with intricate hand-embroidered blouses and handwoven odhanis. Exquisite katan silk lehengas are adorned in the kadhua weave and minakari, reimagining and reviving age-old Banarasi weaving techniques.
The Charbagh collection is all about Mughal grandeur. What’s the collection An Artist’s Legacy all about?
Through this collection, we celebrate the design legacy of Padma Shri Late Jadunath Supakar, one of Banaras’ leading textile designers and artists. The designs of these saris in this collection were commissioned by Tilfi’s founding family and created by Shri Jadunath Supakar for them over two decades ago but had remained in their archives until now. We have created a collection of 19 handwoven silk saris with seven distinct designs that embody heritage Banarasi craftsmanship and intricate handweaving. For this purpose, we approached Supakar’s son, Sribhas Chandra Supakar, and some of the most talented textile designers from Banaras, who then carried forward the work from where Jadunath Supakar had left off. Sribhas has also been awarded a Padma Shri for his work on the revival of the Awadh Jamdani and Gethua technique of weaving. Sribhas worked on a few of the seven designs in this collection, while the other textile designers completed the rest. All of them recreated parts of motifs, filling in the gaps of the design till all the elements came together to create exclusive pieces that are high on artistry and craftsmanship.
What inspired you to venture into the handloom industry?
Udit Khanna, director and co-founder and I used to work abroad in the UK. It is his family’s legacy of handlooms from Banaras from the 1960s, that we are trying to take forward. We don’t have any artistic or business background, but when we saw that our family business was not doing great, we took it upon ourselves to revive and rebrand it, while creating a support system for the artisans.
Did you face any challenges while revamping your family business?
There were quite a few ups and downs. Initially, no one believed in our modern approach of selling traditional saris and lehengas online. But once we managed to streamline the process and showed the increase in sales, along with maintaining a strict quality check, people started to believe in us.
What are your future plan?
We want to take Banarasi handloom work to places far and wide. Also, we are working on a contemporary collection, in contrast to these heritage heavy collections. It will have a combination of jackets and saris, worn in different styles.
An Artist’s Legacy collection: Rs30,000 upwards; Charbagh collection: Rs78,000 upwards. Available online.
— reshmichakravorthy@newindianexpress.com
Twitter: @reshmi190488