Vilanthai Zari Cotton

Vilanthai – A village close to Andimadam of Ariyalur district in Tamil Nadu.

This village predominantly has people from devangas and mudaliar community. At present, there are less than 50 weavers who weave zari cotton sarees.

In earlier days, the livelihood of the village involved weaving Veshits (Dhoti) . The 120 count cotton veshtis had customers all over India. Over a period of time, as the demand of veshtis went down, the weavers switched to saree weaving.

Later, the cluster started to weave sarees with pure silver zari. Govindasamy Chettiar who used to travel Andhra Pradesh for veshti business. saw a demand for for sarees woven with zari. He introduced weaving with zari in his village. The woven sarees were softer and weightless. The design, texture and weight of the saree attracted women all over Andhra Pradesh.

When it comes to Zari weaving, one has to know about types of zaris. The cheaper zaris shine more and fades away quick. This type of zari is called a textured zari. Quality zari is made from silk yarns quoted with real gold and silver. This zari will have 0.6% gold, 53 to 57% silver and 24% silk.

Vilanthai cotton sarees without zari used to weigh 200 gms. Sarees with good amount of zari work will weigh around 250gms. The silver zari weaving has disappeared completely (one can weave only one cubit per day) and they now use textured zari in weaving. The saree is priced depending on the zari and butta works.

At present below mentioned types of sarees woven in vilanthai [Shared as below] However, they change designs over the course of time.

Type – 1 : These are Plain sarees with zari on one end only and a plain body.

Type – 2 : These sarees have buttas woven all over the saree.

Type – 3 : These sarees have checks and buttas all over the saree.

 

“We used to weave more than thousand sarees a month. Computer jacquard came in just now. In our days we used to design motifs by hand. The annam and parrot designs were a huge hit in the market.” says Sathanantham, son of Govindasamy Chettiar. Sathanantham took weaving as his primary job even though he received an offer to join as a teacher in the government school

P.S : The white background is a Toda Embroidery Shawl used as a spread to display the saree.