India · Textile Arts / Embroidery
ગારા (gara); related garments jhabla, kor (border), ijar
Dense hand embroidery in silk floss, usually white or pastel on dark silk, worked on the saris, jackets (jhabla) and borders (kor) of the Parsi community of Gujarat and Mumbai. The style came from Chinese export embroidery bought by Parsi traders in the 19th-century China trade; Surat workshops, then Parsi housewives, copied it. Motifs include peonies, roses, cypress, roosters, fish, pagodas and Chinese figures, worked in satin stitch with variations and French knots, often in 20–30 shades of one color for a single flower. Revived since the 1980s.
Risk level: Endangered · Not inscribed. The Parzor Foundation, a UNESCO-linked Parsi heritage project, runs documentation and revival.
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Etching of text and pictures on seasoned palm leaves with a sharp iron stylus, the lines then blackened with lampblack or kohl paste, as practiced in Odisha, above all in Raghurajpur village near Puri.
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Handwoven flat floor coverings (dhurries) in which a claw-like iron fork, the panja, beats each weft into the cotton warp by hand, producing a dense, durable, weft-faced fabric.
Handloom weaving of tussar (tasar) wild silk in Bhagalpur, Bihar.
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A hand-embroidery tradition of the Otomí (Hñähñu) people of the Mezquital Valley and Sierra Madre Oriental highlands, rendering large-scale, densely populated scenes of stylized animals, plants, and mythological creatures on plain cotton…
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The Cook Islands tivaevae (appliqué quilt) tradition — the production of the distinctive Cook Islands large-format appliqué quilts whose characteristic dense floral and botanical vocabulary (hibiscus, frangipani, tiare) cut from…
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