बनारसी रेशम बुनाई (Banarasi Resham Bunai)
Banarasi silk brocade is a luxury handwoven textile from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, defined by intricate supplementary weft patterns in gold and silver zari thread on a silk ground. Among the finest woven textiles in the world, it furnished Mughal court dress and remains the pre-eminent bridal fabric across the Indian subcontinent. A single kinkhwab sari — where the entire ground is buried in zari — can take three months to complete on the traditional pit loom. The weaving community, centered in the Ansari biradari, is under severe economic pressure from Surat power-loom competition and synthetic zari substitution.
Risk level: Endangered · Under Assessment
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