Banaras Brocade Sarees are made of finely woven silk and decorated with intricate designs using zari; this ornamentation is what makes the sarees heavy. Their special characteristics are Mughal-inspired designs/elements such as intricate floral and foliate motifs, such as kalga and bel. Other features are gold work, compact weaving, figures with small details, metallic visual effects, “jali” (a net-like pattern) and “meena” work. These are woven on the conventional Banaras handloom jacquard, sometimes with “jala”, “pagia” and “naka” attachments for the creation of motifs.
Brocade is a heavy textured rich fabric in which many colors of silk and metallic yarns of gold and silver is used to give a luxurious look and feel; it is a specialty of Varanasi. Weaving a brocade sari is a laborious process and requires great skill. The oral tradition of learning is the process followed in the training of weavers and years of apprenticeship follow with only the best permitted to weave a brocade sari.
This sari has been woven in a extra weft technique called Karuwa, with metallic yarns of silver and gold interspersed with silk, also thus known as Ganga-Jamuna since it combines two opposites.
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