Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, May 5: Two weaver brothers from Nuapatna in Cuttack district have embarked upon an ambitious challenge: reproducing the entire range of sculptures of the Konark Sun Temple onto silk fabrics.
The brothers, now in their fifties, have been working on tie and dye designs on silk since they were children.
Hailing from the famous weaver village of Nuapatna, 54-year-old Sarat Patra and his brother Sahadev are busy at work on their looms, sometimes for several hours without a break, in order to make their dream come true.
“We’ve been consumed by this project for four-and-a-half years. We expect to finish our project shortly,” says Sarat Patra, barely looking up from his loom. Reproducing the grandeur of the Sun Temple on silk must be no easy task, but the brothers are up to it. Sarat is an experienced weaver who has won four national awards for his pathbreaking work in traditional tie and dye work, and has an impressive oeuvre spanning a wide range of weaving methods.
“We’re reproducing the brilliant sculptures of Sun Temple on our fabric using the ‘tie and dye’ method. It is a complicated process in which we first tie the design on the fabric, unwind it, dye and tie it again and put it under the loom,” Sarat says, attempting to offer an insight into his work.
Among his other pieces of work is a fabric 52 metres long, containing all the poems of Geetagobinda by legendary poet Jayadev. “I reproduced all the poems of Geetagobinda by the famous Oriya poet Jaydev on a fabric measuring 52 m in length. I received many accolades for the work. It was not meant to be a commercial venture; the idea was to raise awareness among our people regarding our traditional design work. I later received a request from the Victorian Museum in London to display my work there but I declined the offer,” Sarat says.
For his Dasavatar Geetagobindam fabric, he was honoured with the national award in 1993.
Sarat and his brother have also been approached by the state government which evinced interest in displaying some of their innovative works at the State Museum in the capital city.
The duo rarely takes a break from their work, and when they do, they come up with interesting fabrics for their personal collection, Sarat says.
The brothers meanwhile are buoyed by the response they are getting from visitors. “We get to see several visitors in our village. We always show our non-commercial works to them and many are pleasantly surprised upon seeing our works. Their appreciation means a lot and helps us in pursuing our craft relentlessly. We will continue coming up with such work which will keep our tradition alive,” says Sahadev, who makes fine clothes from raw fabrics.
The brothers have already made designs of Kamasutra, the life of the Buddha, and other mythological stories on silk fabrics. The uniqueness of the tie and dye design is that the cloth looks the same from both the sides.
