Beige Tribal Art Print Tussar Silk Saree with Black Border – Bhagalpuri

Nartaki

Undyed tussar in its own warm beige, printed with a crowd of dancing figures — arms raised, bodies filled with blue and orange arcs — and bordered in bands of spiral, zigzag and flower, closed by a black sawtooth edge.

About the print

This is tribal art, drawn in the idiom that runs through folk painting across western and central India: a person built from two triangles meeting at the waist, a circle for the head, four strokes for limbs. Nothing is shaded and nothing is modelled — and yet these figures are unmistakably in motion.

Here they have been given decorated bodies, filled with concentric arcs, stripes and dots in blue, orange and red, which is a contemporary treatment rather than a strict one. Around them the borders build up in bands: orange spiral meanders, red zigzag, small blue flowers, and a run of black sawtooth triangles framing the whole thing.

It is a busy saree that somehow reads as calm, because everything in it is drawn from the same small vocabulary of shapes.

About the fabric

Tussar Ghicha silk, handwoven in Bhagalpur, left undyed. Ghicha is the yarn drawn from the outer layers of the cocoon and spun by hand, which gives the cloth its slubby texture and soft matte lustre. The natural beige is the yarn's own colour — nothing has been bleached out to make a ground for the print.

Details

• Fabric: Tussar Ghicha Silk
• Colour: Natural beige with blue, orange, red and black
• Print: Tribal art, all-over
• Body: Dancing figures with geometric border bands
• Border: Black sawtooth edge with spiral, zigzag and flower bands
• Pallu: Dense figurative panel
• Blouse piece: unstitched, 0.8 m
• Saree length: 5.5 m | Width: 1.1 m
• Care: Dry clean only. Store wrapped in cotton or muslin, refold along a different line every few months.

A note on handloom

Each piece is woven individually, so slight irregularities in the slub and small variations in how the print falls across the weave are characteristic of the craft rather than defects. Colour may vary a little from your screen.