The artisan woke up at dawn to bring the yarn skeins out before the sun is out too vividly, and washed them before they are laid out to warp. He cradled unassumingly in his hands with love and labour, in response to the sun and the ether for that right balance of the elements. And just like that, I realised the meaning of mindfulness. This everyday quality of traditional craft is most magical. It is what upholds passion and creativity, achieved by people performing tasks in unity, not set far from society and common people in isolation but born right in the midst of it. Set to rhythm by an adherence to time, weather, and seasonal changes, signifying man’s interactions with the world around them and swiftly portraying it in the closest possible materials available to them.
What if we pause and wonder what the first loom on earth would have looked like? How did our ancestors arrive at this exquisite piece of engineering that requires a structure meant to fasten yarn together in order to weave them into textiles?
It is a reckoning of history, of thousands of years of evolving human hand and aesthetic put to practice on a humble device that click-clocks rhythmically in a shed. Far from the machine made perfections of a powerloom, it exudes with beauty and the story of strife and survival.
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