Saffron Madhubani Print Tussar Silk Saree with Fish Motif – Bhagalpuri

Mina

A deep saffron through the body, scattered with small printed flowers, and then borders and pallu that turn to natural beige and fill with Madhubani — rows of fish swimming between leaves, women standing under flowering trees, and band after band of fine leaf and diamond work.

About the print

This is a screen-printed Madhubani in the tradition's storytelling register. The composition is built in stacked rows: a band of fish, then a band of figures, then leaf and diamond, then fish again — each separated by a fine line, nothing left empty. It is a way of filling a space that Mithila painters have used for generations, and it rewards looking closely, because every band has something different in it.

Fish appear more often than any other creature in Mithila painting. They stand for abundance and for good fortune, and they are drawn the way they are here — scaled in rows of colour, eye picked out, always in pairs or in shoals, never alone.

The palette is held soft: sage, coral, amber and black on beige, which is what lets it sit against a saffron body without the two competing.

About the fabric

Tussar Ghicha silk, handwoven in Bhagalpur. The slub runs visibly through the saffron, so the colour breaks and lifts rather than sitting flat, and the natural beige of the printed ground is close to the yarn's own colour.

Details

• Fabric: Pure handloom Ghicha Tussar silk
• Colour: Saffron with natural beige, sage, coral and amber
• Print: Screen-printed Madhubani (Mithila)
• Body: Small printed floral butis, scattered
• Border: Wide printed Madhubani band, both sides, with a saffron edge
• Pallu: Full Madhubani panel — fish, figures and flowering trees in registers
• Saree length: 5.5 m · Width: 1.10 m
• Blouse piece: 0.80 m, unstitched
• Package contains: 1 saree with blouse piece
• Wash care: Dry clean only

On handloom

Every metre of this saree passed through a pit loom worked by hand and foot. No motor is involved anywhere in the process — the weaver sets the pace, and the cloth carries that pace in it. Bhagalpur has been weaving silk this way for generations, and what comes off its looms does not resemble what comes off the looms at Varanasi or Chanderi. The yarn is different, the water is different, and so are the hands.

On tussar

Tussar comes from silkworms that feed in open forest rather than on cultivated mulberry. That wilder life shows in the yarn — thicker, less even, and carrying a warm honey colour of its own before any dye touches it. Weavers across eastern India have worked with it for centuries. The hand is drier and more open than mulberry silk, which is the point of tussar rather than a shortcoming.

On colour and variation

These sarees are dyed in small lots and woven one at a time, so no two are alike — and no single piece is quite uniform from end to end. You may find the shade deepening a little along the length, a heavier slub where the yarn ran thick, or the print falling slightly differently across the weave. None of that is damage. Screens also render colour differently, so expect some drift from what you see here.