Ilkal Cotton Silk Saree

Details

An Ilkal saree woven in Ilkal, Bagalkot district, Karnataka, on frame looms in a cluster that has made this weave for centuries. Ilkal Saree is registered under the Geographical Indications of Goods Act, 1999, and this piece carries that GI along with the Handloom Mark. The body is 110 GSM cotton, the pallu is mulberry silk, and the two are joined at the loom by the kondi technique, a loop join worked by hand in which the silk pallu warp is looped through the cotton body warp thread by thread. That join, and the red tope teni pallu hanging from it, is what makes an Ilkal an Ilkal rather than a saree with a silk end. The cheat is a power loom. Power-loom cloth sold as handloom is one of the largest frauds in Indian textiles, and Ilkal is copied at volume because the border and the pallu read the same from two feet away. A copy cannot carry a kondi join, because a loom running two hundred picks a minute cannot make one, so the pallu is stitched on or simply woven through. Turn the saree over at the pallu seam and look: the loops are there on the reverse, or they are not. The second cheat is the word silk, where art silk, viscose or polyester is sold as the pallu of a cotton silk saree. The third is zari, where a copper core in a polyester film wrap is called tested zari.

• GI registered as Ilkal Saree, and Handloom Mark tagged
• Body 100 percent cotton, pallu 100 percent mulberry silk, about 82 percent cotton and 18 percent silk by weight of the whole saree
• Pallu joined by the kondi loop technique, visible on the reverse
• Gomi teni border woven in, never printed on
• No art silk, no viscose and no polyester anywhere in the pallu
• Imitation zari in the border accent, said plainly, because this is not a tested-zari saree
• Azo-free reactive dye on the cotton, natural dye on the silk pallu, and no starch loaded in to fake body The honest part: a deep ground shade lets go of a little colour for the first two washes, wet rubbing fastness is grade 3 to 4 rather than 4 to 5, and cotton relaxes about 2 percent, so a 6.3 m saree drapes a little under 6.2 m after the first wash. Buy the length with that in mind.