The making of a handloom saree.

The thread, before anything else.

Mulberry silk from Ramanagara, just outside Bangalore, where the cocoons are still reeled by women working in shade. Cotton from Ponduru, Andhra Pradesh, hand-spun on the charkha — the only cotton fine enough for our Chanderi.

Real zari comes from one specific lane in Surat, where copper wire is coated with silver and then with 22-carat gold. We do not use polyester zari. You can hear the difference when the saree falls.

Every yarn supplier is visited at least once a year. No middlemen.

The colour, drawn from the earth.

Indigo for the deep blues. Madder root for terracotta. Pomegranate rind for the warm yellows. Iron for greys, mordanted with myrobalan, not chrome. Where a colour demands chemical assistance, we use AZO-free dyes — and we say so on the tag.

The dyeing happens in copper vats over wood fires, twice over for fastness. Each batch is sampled three times before the warp is committed. The river that runs past the dye yard at Chanderi leaves cleaner than it arrived.

The loom, and the time it asks for.

Pit looms for Kanjivaram and Mysore. Jacquard for the heavier Banarasi brocade. The jaala pattern-loom — operated by two weavers in tandem, one above, one below — for our finest Banarasi katan.

A six-yard saree takes between twenty days (a simple Chanderi) and one hundred and eighty days (a bridal Kanjivaram with full korvai border and brocade pallu). We never rush this. We never have. The most a master weaver can produce is eight sarees a year.

No powerloom is used at any point. If you can identify a piece on our shelf that could have been made faster on a powerloom — we'd like to hear from you.

The last hands, here in Bangalore.

Every finished saree arrives at our studio in Jayanagar. We unfold it on the takht, inspect the warp count, the colourfastness, the integrity of the zari border. Sarees that do not meet our standard are returned to the weaver with the cost still paid in full.

The accepted pieces are gently washed in cool water with soapnut, blocked flat, and pressed without steam. Each one is tagged with the weaver's name, the date of completion, the yarn count and a fibre certificate.

Then it waits, folded in muslin, until it is yours.