Jamdani

What is Jamdani?

Jamdani is a fine muslin cloth woven in cotton, with its patterns worked into the fabric as it is made instead of printed on afterwards. It belongs to Bengal, and the historic centre of production is South Rupshi in the Narayanganj district of Bangladesh, on the bank of the Shitalakshya River, with weaving also around Dhaka. The cloth is sheer and light, commonly grey and white, and the motifs sit inside the weave so they seem to float on a shimmering ground. Sarees are the best known use, though jamdani is also cut for scarves and handkerchiefs. Weavers describe it as one of the slowest and most demanding forms of handloom work.

Where does Jamdani come from?

Muslin is mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and in the writings of Arab, Chinese and Italian travellers and traders, and the jamdani weaving tradition itself is Bengali. The fabric was once called Dhakai, after the weaving city of Dhaka, and the Persian word jamdani came into favour at the Mughal court, whose emperors supported the trade through imperial warrants. Under British rule the Bengal jamdani and muslin industries fell away, unable to compete with cloth imported from Great Britain, and villages such as Madhurapur and Jangalbari in Kishoreganj district, once known for the work, faded. Production has since revived in Bangladesh.

How is Jamdani made?

Jamdani is handloom woven. A standard weft binds the warp threads into a fine, sheer ground, and a second, thicker weft carries the pattern. Each motif is put in separately by hand, the weft threads interlaced into the warp with fine bamboo sticks and fed from individual spools. Nothing is sketched on the cloth: the design is drawn on graph paper and slipped underneath the warp as a guide. The result is a dense mix of patterns floating on the surface. Cotton is the fibre, sometimes combined with gold thread, and the palette stays close to grey and white, with white, black, gold and silver threads used for the figuring.

Colours, motifs and borders

The motifs are geometric, plant and floral, and are said to have been developed thousands of years ago. Because the pattern lives in the weave rather than on the surface, it has no outline and no printed edge; it is read as a soft figure against the sheer ground. Typically the cloth is grey and white, and gold or silver thread may be worked in with the cotton for a little lustre. The sources say nothing about borders or about the decorated end, so the design interest here sits in the field of the cloth itself.

When Jamdani is worn

Jamdani was long a marker of rank. Only aristocratic and royal families could afford it, because of the patience the weaving takes, and it is still described as a symbol of aristocracy, with demand for good jamdani sarees rising over the years. A piece was costly even in the eighteenth century, when one was recorded at 56 Livre in 1776, and the figured muslin was always counted among the most expensive products of the Dhaka looms. Beyond this the sources give no rites, festivals or ceremonies tied to it.

Styles of Jamdani

Though mostly woven for sarees, jamdani is also made into scarves and handkerchiefs. Under the Mughals the figured muslin, most likely in the reigns of Akbar or Jahangir, took the name jamdani, and the cloth is still popularly called Dhakai Jamdani or simply Dhakai. Contemporary designers and design schools have been working on new jamdani patterns, and labels such as TARINA create modern clothing from the cloth to reach younger buyers, while a Jamdani Palli has come up near Dhaka. The sources do not compare handloom and powerloom versions.

What Jamdani means

UNESCO inscribed the traditional art of jamdani weaving on its Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list in 2013. In 2016 Bangladesh granted jamdani sari geographical indication status, the first such status for any product of the country. The trade is fragile: a senior taanti or ostad earns little, junior weavers less, and many families push their children towards the garment industry instead. Government bodies and design institutes are trying to revive the craft and to link weavers directly with buyers, and in West Bengal the master weaver Biren Kumar Basak received the Padma Shri for his jamdani work. A Jamdani Festival of Wearable Art was held in Bangladesh in July 2023.

Questions people ask about Jamdani

Good reading and sources

• ::: Star Weekend Magazine :::The Daily Star, Article
• Request RejectedUNESCO, Heritage listing

• Jamdani on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data