Ikat: the cloth that remembers

Ikat is dyed before it is woven. Skeins of silk are bound tightly with cotton thread at intervals, dipped in dye, unbound, re-bound elsewhere and dipped again — for every colour in the design. Only then does the thread go onto the loom, where the pattern reassembles itself as the weaver works.

The slight misalignment of thousands of threads is what gives ikat its signature: motifs with soft, feathered edges, as though seen through water. In Margilan they call the cloth abr — cloud.

Margilan Ikat House still works with natural dyes: indigo, madder root, pomegranate skin, walnut husk. A hand loom produces about two metres a day. The scarf around your neck represents a week of a family's work.