Natural Beige Warli Print Tussar Ghicha Silk Saree – Bhagalpuri Handloom

Gaon

Undyed tussar in its own warm beige, printed edge to edge with a Warli village — rows of figures walking, carrying, dancing; animals between them; birds along the bands; a plain red border closing the whole thing.

About the work

This is Warli, the tribal painting tradition of the Sahyadri region, where the entire human world is built from three shapes. A person is two triangles meeting at the waist, a circle for the head, four strokes for limbs. An animal is the same logic on its side. Nothing is shaded, nothing is modelled — and yet a whole village of activity comes through.

Traditionally Warli is painted in white rice paste on a mud-brown wall. Here it has been printed in teal, red and black onto the natural colour of the tussar, which keeps the earthiness of the original while giving the figures far more life than a single colour would.

The reward of this piece is how small the scale is. Stand back and it reads as texture; come close and it is hundreds of people, each one doing something.

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 — the closest thing silk offers to the mud wall Warli belongs on.

Details

• Fabric: Tussar Ghicha Silk
• Colour: Natural beige with red, teal and black
• Print: Warli, all-over
• Body: Village figures, animals and birds in registers
• Border: Plain red, with printed Warli bands alongside
• Pallu: Dense Warli 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.