TALES 》 Shantipuri or Santipore Cotton Saree

Soaked in handloom tradition, deeprooted weaves

A small town called Shantipur, also called by Santipur, Nadia district in the Indian state of West Bengal. Santipur is famous for handloom sarees from ancient times, this place and surrounding region has been famous for handloom sarees.

Shantipur sarees are also called by name Santipore saree. This place is famous for handloom sarees from ancient times and elegant designs inspired from nature and especially known for its superfine dhoti and handloom saree with jacquard design. In this place, they generally use 'fly shuttle' frame looms filted with jacquard invariably used in Shantipur. Graceful looking sarees have been granted and awarded GI tag(Santipore Saree). To weave double-sided design they use Do-Rookha technique, the front and the reverse side of the saree looks extractly the same. After the partition of India, many weavers came from Dhaka of Bangladesh and started to reside here in Phulia region, which is a Panchayat area of Santipur. Bengali language prevalently spoken by the people of the state of West Bengal.

These magnificent sarees are available in two mediums such as

• Shantipur/Santipore Cotton sarees
• Shantipuri Silk sarees

The main body of the saree has fine stripes and delicate checks or a texture created by coloured threads or a combination of fine and thicker yarns. Many a times one can notice, tie and dye designs are also being used for the pallu(anchalas) and also jamdani designs butis. Striking borders could be either dyed cotton-silk or art-silk, viscose yarns, gold zari and silver zari. The motifs used are phool known as flower, tara known as star, hathi known as elephant, rajmahal known as royal palace.

Some typical names of sarees based on the designs

• Taskhupi
• Sarbasundari
• Chakaram

Various types of Shantipur sarees
Chandmala, Taj Kalka, Kaldungri, Nilambari sarees, Vomra, Kaldumri, Dorokho, Ganga Jamuna, Terchi, Gont, Anspar, Mour-Par, Rajmahal, Bhomra, Visva-Bharati, Brindamani and Benkipar.

Fabric care for Shantipur/Santipore cotton sarees
Please check out for specific care instructions on the garment tag, once you purchase and follow the instructions carefully, it addition to it, here are certain guidelines

• Soak the cotton saree for about 10-15 minutes with small amount of rock salt with warm water for first few washes and than can be washed with machine wash or manually, but if there are embellishments on the saree, than better to give for dry cleaning.
• Use only mild detergent to wash a cotton sarees
• If necessary one can starch the saree as well based on personal preferences
• For ironing, keep the iron in medium or low heat