Express news service
BHUBANESWAR: A few years ago, a peek into her mother’s saree collection that was a mix of patterns, colors and motifs introduced Swikruti Pradhan to an ancient beautiful weave – a Patta Bapta. The saree was a wedding gift her mother had received over three decades ago.
City-based Swikruti, a fashion engineering and management student and designer by choice, realized that the saree was unique for its design and weave. Her subsequent attempts to trace the origin of the weave and its creator made her realize that Bapta weaving was already a dying tradition in undivided Sambalpur.
Swikruti, who owns a design brand Rustic Hue, began her journey to revive it in 2018. Through consistent efforts and design interventions over the past four years, the 31-year-old designer has now been able to put the Bapta saree back on Odisha’s handloom map. Recently, her Bapta project won her the Best Design Award 2022 in Textile Design at the Design India Show.
“The beautiful Patta Bapta saree is a unique combination of cotton and silk (mulberry) yarn with traditional temple borders (Phoda Kumbha) with three shuttle weave and Sambalpuri Ikat aanchal. They are the easiest and super comfortable to wear for longer duration. But to find a genuine Patta Bapta saree is a rarity even today, she says.
Patta Bapta and Tasar Bapta (combination of Tasar silk and cotton) are mainly woven in Bargarh and Barpali villages of western Odisha by Kosta and Bhulia groups of the famous Meher weaving community. While the Ikat part is done by Bhulia Mehers, the weaving using 3-shuttle technique is done by Kosta Mehers. Two weavers work simultaneously on a loom to weave a saree.
“When I started working on the revival project, there were only two weaving families in western Odisha that wove Bapta sarees. I spent a lot of time not only on research to revive this ancient saree with modern designs in terms of motifs and textures, but also to persuade the talented weavers to work on it regularly to bring it back in demand,” said Swikruti, who studied BTech in Fashion Technology from CET, Bhubaneswar and a degree in Fashion Management from NIFT.
During her revival project, she also created a collection of Patta Bapta sarees which are mostly minimalist and contemporary with unusual striking color combinations compared to the traditional ones. Neither too shiny like silk nor too matte like cotton, they have a subtle combination of shine and texture.
The sarees come with traditional temple borders (Phoda Kumbha), an evolved version of ‘Rui Maach’ (fish motif) on the body and elaborate Sambalpuri Ikat anchal with multiple motifs such as ‘Baandhi’, ‘Ghagra’, ‘Baad Phool’, ‘Chot’ Phool ‘, ‘Lazy’ etc. She also introduced patterns like thick and thin stripes, checks to modernize the saree. Currently, she works with at least 15 weaving families from both the Kosta and Bhulia groups. Her Bapta revival project was also published by Springer Nature journal.
WHAT IS BAPTA?
A saree that is woven in both silk and cotton
Known for its unique structure and appearance
It was traditionally woven by Meher Bhulia and the Kosta community
It is believed to be more than half a century old
#Saving #Bapta #fabric #design #time
