The well-known Hazratbal dargah in Srinagar is attracting locals for a uncommon spectacle this week — the washing and clipping of the biggest carpet woven in Kashmir by far. The intricate marvel is 72 ft. in size and 40 ft. in width, weighs 1,685 kg, and options over three crore knots.
The uncommon try pits Kashmiri artisans for the primary time in opposition to their conventional Iranian rivals, who’ve already woven a carpet the scale of a soccer discipline at 60,468 sq. ft. The dargah offers a secure and huge sufficient area for clipping and washing the massive and invaluable carpet, which has taken eight years to finish and is prone to embellish a palace within the Center East.
“No less than 30 individuals are required to unroll the carpet. It might take 30-35 skilled washers to take care of the carpet each day,” Zahoor Ahmad Shah, proprietor of the Shah Qadir and Sons, informed The Hindu.
Samples of water from the close by Dal lake have been despatched for testing to the Indian Institute of Carpet Expertise, Srinagar. “We await the report to make sure the water is not going to hurt the carpet. We’re dealing with it as delicately as doable,” Mr. Shah mentioned.
Mr. Shah’s firm acquired the order for the carpet in 2014 and started engaged on it in 2015. “It was not a simple activity. In between, we had been hit by a number of challenges, together with the 2014 floods, the abrogation of Article 370 in J&Okay in 2019, after which waves of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he mentioned.
The carpet is within the Kashan model, a historic design adopted from the Iranian metropolis of Kashan.
The corporate needed to rent engineers to remake a carpet loom on the Vailoo-Kunzar village in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district as Kashmir had no larger loom to match the duty. Cranes lifted the carpet on to giant trawlers for its transportation from Baramulla to Srinagar.
“Engineers modified and joined two main looms, and unfold them over a forty five ft. vast space. Every day, 25-30 artisans spent hours upon hours, working over a interval of eight years to perform the feat. Everybody from the one who sourced the order to us to the artisans who put of their sweat and blood made it doable,” Mr. Shah mentioned.
He mentioned that round 200 carpet artisans who had switched to different professions returned to the commerce for this challenge. “The carpet business is waning in Kashmir and poor wages are pushing artisans to different professions. I imagine that tasks like this may rekindle hope,” Mr. Shah mentioned.
Kashmir, regardless of being among the many main carpet producing States in India, has seen sluggish progress as a result of falling numbers of artisans within the sector. Over one lakh artisans are employed by the carpet business in Kashmir.
Official information present carpet manufacturing stood at ₹84.55 crore in 1990 and touched ₹821.50 crore in 2017, dropping to ₹299 crore in 2020-2021, solely to bounce again to ₹357 crore in 2022-2023. The feat of manufacturing one of many world’s largest carpets has infused new life into the craft.
“Kashmiris have been weaving carpets for hundreds of years. Nevertheless, measurement has all the time remained a constraint. There are only a few giant carpets. The oldest and the biggest carpet from Kashmir continues to decorate the Darbar Corridor of the Grand Lalit Resort in Srinagar. I salute the weavers for creating these masterpieces. This can be a watershed revival second for Kashmir’s carpet business,” Mahmood Ahmed Shah, Director, Handicrafts and Handloom Industries, Kashmir, mentioned.
