Tilfi promotes artisan weaves with revivalist initiative

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Apr 12, 2022

Tilfi Banaras has delved into late artist Jadunath Supakar’s archives to revive decades-old, unfinished weaves and complete them with a group of artisans. The brand has also launched a series of films to document the process.   

Tilfi Banaras has launched ‘An Artist’s Legacy’ as a collection of handloom sarees which were created in collaboration with Supakar’s son and Padma Shree awardee Sribhas Chandra Supakar, the brand announced on Facebook. The idea behind the collection was to revive once forgotten designs and finish them as Supakar would have intended. The collection’s accompanying film is designed to celebrate the artisans who made the process possible. 
 
“We want the limelight to shine more on our craftspeople and the entire community effort that it takes to create even one textile,” Tilfi co-founder Aditi Chand told Elle India about the brand’s aim for its film series. “We want to change the narrative and question the way we misuse the words heritage revival and Banarasi.” 

“We began the process roughly two years ago and the designs had been in our family archives for several years,” Chand said about the brand’s process of reviving the unfinished weaves.

“They’d been lying unfinished and it was our father who’d commissioned these designs from Padma Shri Late Jadunath Supakar who made the prints which never saw the light of the day due to his untimely passing. We frequently go through our archives and as someone rightly said, in craft, you’re always working backwards into the future. It’s sort of a point of reference where we’re always looking at museum pieces or even our own designs to gain some inspiration.”
 
The brand launched the films on its website with the idea that anyone can watch them. Tilfi Banaras co-founders Aditi Chand and Ujjwal Khanna launched Tilfi Banaras with the aim of reviving handloom traditions to keep them alive.