Our beautiful Tree of Life bedspreads are woven in the Jamawar tradition in the Indian Punjab.
I want to take a look at some details we find in the reversible Tree of Life Jamawar bedspreads from India. The designs are full of life with images of birds of many species, flowers and leaves. And they're woven in a way that means they're reversible - you really do get two bedspreads in one - and they make stunning wall hangings. You can buy them here.
The Tree of Life is a classic and fundamental archetype throughout Central Asia and is seen in many of the world's ancient traditions. It appears in myth and as metaphor in many of the philosophies and religions, not just in Asia but also in China, ancient Egypt and Nordic and Native American traditions. It is associated with the Tree of Knowledge and connection between earth and the afterlife and the heavens.
I'm not sure what the birds are in the images above but below we have a pair of cranes and an abundance of finches. There's a left-right symmetry which is common in many Tree of Life images. Black necked cranes are one of the most loved birds in the Himalayas, it's always regarded as a great boon to see a pair.
These bedspreads are woven in the technique known as Jamawar which traditionally refers to a type of elaborate shawl from Kashmir. The ornate silk Jamawars of the era of the Moghul emperors could take several years to make and were the preserve of the rich Maharajas of the time. The Emperor Akbar was a patron of these fabrics and had silks and special weavers brought from Western China.
Again we can see cranes, or maybe herons, flying across this blue and green bedspread above tall long billed wading birds. Butterflies form part of the border among a classic floral chain pattern.
One of the features of this type of cloth, in addition to the richness of the design and its reversible quality, is the shimmering, shot silk, effect you get if you use silky threads. This has the effect of the colours shifting as you handle or turn the fabric in the light; they are actually quite hard to photograph on account of this but it greatly adds to the magic and beauty of the piece. We can get an idea of this in the next example which incorporates a bird that looks halfway between a turkey and a peacock.
Around the mid nineteenth century there was a demand for this type of material that coincided with the development of the Jacquard loom. Joseph Jacquard invented a rotatable attachment with a series of holes punched into card which controlled hooks that raised and lowered threads on the loom permitting complex patterns to be made at a fast speed.
I love the hoopoo birds in this bedspread. They are one of our favourite sights when we stay in Ladakh in northern India, just east of Kashmir.
The history of the textile industry is full of inventions and developments that threatened older processes and displace the traditional workers but even now there is some demand for work that may take a year or more to complete.
As I write this blog in July 2024, at this very moment there is a wedding taking place in Gujarat that is reputed to be costing over £600 million. There are famous international guests among the world's richest. Although we may blanche at the disparity of wealth in the world I hope that some custom is going to the astonishing artisans that continue to produce textiles that are beyond belief.
Back in the real world we have a few of these Jacquard Tree of Life Bedspreads selling for £95 and you can see them here.
