By Ines Keane
Each saree carries a unique ID, a hologram-based design and a barcode woven into the fabric. Wikipedia says so, and says the point is to help identify genuine products of the Karnataka Silk Industries Corporation, or KSIC.
A short history
Wikipedia says silk weaving in the Mysore region declined after the fall of the Vijayanagara Empire. Under Tipu Sultan, around 1780 to 1790, the article says, the silk industry in the Kingdom of Mysore was revived. Later, it was hit by a global depression and competed with imported silk and rayon, and it revived in the second half of the twentieth century.
The factory was founded in 1912 by Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar of Mysore. Its early output served the royal family and the state’s armed forces. After independence, the Mysore State Sericulture Department took over the weaving factory, and in 1980 it was handed to KSIC.
From cocoon to cloth
Wikipedia says Mysore silk is mulberry silk, so named because the silkworms are fed mulberry leaves. It says Karnataka’s silk is mainly produced in Mysore district, and the cocoons come mainly from Ramanagara district, where KSIC officials buy them at a daily government bidding process. The cocoons are boiled at a raw silk factory in T. Narasipura to extract the thread, which is then sent to the Mysore weaving factory.
What it makes
The article says sarees are the most popular product. Other products include shirts, kurtas, silk dhotis and neckties.
The zari quarrel
Here two sources part company. Wikipedia says the saree zari is mainly silver with a small amount of gold. The KSIC online shop describes one product line as “woven from the finest silk with pure gold zari”. The shop page gives no information on zari composition or purity, and it is a marketing page. We report both statements and choose neither. A buyer who cares about the zari should ask for the seller’s documentation.
Telling silk from not-silk
The same shop page says “art silk” is not natural or pure silk. It describes a burning test that can be done anywhere: pure silk gives the smell of burning hair and leaves a black residue that crumbles to powder under a finger. The page calls it a layman’s test, and so do we. It is a rough check and not a laboratory analysis, and we have not tried it. It also says that for 100 per cent silk, both warp and weft should be pure silk yarn.
Dates in order
- About 1780 to 1790: silk revived under Tipu Sultan, according to Wikipedia.
- 1912: the weaving factory founded by Krishnaraja Wodeyar, according to Wikipedia.
- After independence: the Mysore State Sericulture Department takes over, according to Wikipedia.
- 1980: the factory handed to KSIC, according to Wikipedia.
- Second half of the twentieth century: a later revival, according to Wikipedia.
Side by side
Wikipedia is the history and the process. The shop page is a sales page with a rough test and a claim about zari. They do not describe the same things, and where they do touch, on zari, they disagree. Wikipedia says Mysore silk has a Geographical Indication tag and gives no year.
What kind of sources these are
An encyclopaedia anyone can edit and the producer’s own online shop, which is a marketing page. We read no independent textile source, no government page and no maker’s account. We say nothing about price. Every date in this piece comes from the encyclopaedia, and the shop page supplies none, so a reader who wants a second dated source for the 1912 founding or the 1980 handover will need to look beyond what we read. The zari disagreement is the one place where the two sources speak to the same fact, and it is the place where a buyer should be most careful.
Questions a buyer would ask
Does the saree carry the unique ID, hologram design and barcode the article describes? What is the zari made of, and can the seller show documentation? Is the warp as well as the weft pure silk? Where was it woven? We name no weaver. We give no care advice beyond the shop page’s own suggestion to wrap zari sarees in cotton cloth, which we pass along as theirs and have not tested.
What KSIC is
Wikipedia describes KSIC as a Karnataka government public sector undertaking that produces Mysore silk. It says KSIC took over the Mysore silk weaving factory in 1980 and handles silk weaving and distribution. That tells a buyer something useful: the name on a genuine piece is the name of a state body, and the identifying marks the article lists, the unique ID, the hologram-based design and the woven barcode, are that body’s marks. A piece without them is not necessarily false, since the article does not say that, but the marks are what the article offers as a check.
What the two sources add up to
Put together, the sources give a chain: a mulberry silk, cocoons bought at a daily government bidding, thread extracted at one raw silk factory, weaving at another, and a state corporation that sells the result. They give no figure for how much silk this yields and no description of the weave. Our reading: the chain is unusually short and unusually public compared with most textiles, which is why the identifying marks are possible at all. That is our inference, and neither source says it.
What we left out
We left out prices, and the numbers of looms and workers, which we did not find. We left out the other products’ details. We left out any statement of how the cloth feels or drapes, since no source we read describes it.
Roam first. Shop later.