Learning at home
B. Krishnamoorthy was born into a weaving family in Kanchipuram, the fourth generation at the loom. He began helping at 12, and after Class 10 learnt weaving and design from his father, his grandfather and two other weavers, including jala, an old and difficult way of weaving motifs into silk.
From the loom to the drawing board
At 21 he joined Co-optex, the state handloom weavers’ society, as a weaver, and moved into design: drawing patterns on graph paper so a loom could follow them. He travelled to other handloom towns to study their designs and built two lines of sarees for Co-optex. In 2004, after 24 years, he left to take on new work.
An archive in pencil
His notebooks hold more than ten thousand drawings: parrots, peacocks, elephants, horses, coins, leaves, flowers and the yali. He builds new designs from old ones, he says, “but only the idea, the outward shape”. He now works as a designer, archivist and teacher.
“It has to be taught when young,” he says, and he would like weaving taught in schools. The craft, he worries, does not come back once a family leaves it.
“It has to be taught when young.”
Points for a finance reader
- Design is an asset: record it. Ten thousand drawings are a library a business can use for decades.
- Skill is the scarce input. Silk and zari can be bought. A trained designer and weaver cannot be bought quickly.
- Count everyone in the chain. 219 people touch one saree. A fair price has to reach them.