The hand-weaving of fabric, a centuries old traditional craft, is primarily a household activity, in which the entire family is engaged. Over the past few decades, more so as the industrial production capacities built-up, the craft has been abandoned by a very large number of families, and many more continue to do so. Denim Club understands the critical significance of the typical home and family based set-up, in the entire handloom weaving eco-system, and has been motivating the families of the crafts-persons to bring their old, now unused looms back to life.
PRIMARY RESOURCE
PEOPLE
Our primary resource in the Handloom Denim Initiative is PEOPLE.
There is a very large number of crafts-persons, who have the craft running in their blood, and who – over a period of time – have gradually been withering away from this traditional craft of hand-weaving, for the simple reason that this activity does not bring in enough for a reasonable and respectable living.
We have tried to pull them back into the fold of this age-old heritage, and have been moderately successful in our attempts.
The craft of hand-weaving is quite wide-spread in the entire rural eco-system in Indian subcontinent, and there is no dearth of skilled hands for scaling up the operations. We can organize weaving of thousands of meters of fabric in a matter of days and weeks, if required.
BASIC STRENGTH
ECO-SYSTEM
We draw our basic strength from the Handloom Weaving Eco-system.
We have very religiously pursued the conventional method of hand-weaving, in which the weaving families work within their homes, using very basic tools and equipment, which again are all hand-made. This approach makes available to us hundreds and thousands of handlooms, along with the requisite apparatus for preparatory processes. All dyeing is also carried out in the same places.
We are thus able to manage to carry out the entire production process in rural areas, completely synchronized with nature, without requiring electricity, and without burning any fuels.
This approach makes available a huge resource of skilled crafts-persons, very large number of looms and other equipment, and a lot of working space, all in one place.