Amazing art of triabal- Toda embroidery

Let us view unique tribal embroidery style _ Toda  embroidery, which on rapture the designers. The today tribes women Practice this old thread work, who are inhabit of Nilgiris region in Tamil nadu. 

Tracing the tradition

Toda residentially know by the name ‘ Pugur' in Toda language (meaning flower),  the embroidery tradition has lived through a century of its documented history to manifest today in drapes,  superman, skirts, Kurtis, Table cloth, pillow covers, jackets, stoles, beside the traditional puthukuli ( shawl), it’s original place of majesty. 

The Nilgiris are home to eighteen tribal groups among when Toda are the most distinct. Their language, through Dravidian, has no script and their first contact to outer world were in 1799.

Basically, Toda’s are agricultural  and buffalo rearing tribes. The women involved in embroider the traditional draped garment called phoothkuli or shawl.  It is a thick while unbleached cotton cloth used as a mantle by both men and women.

Fabrication process 

On one end of the cloth three stripes_ two of the red and one of the black _ are woven into it. It is in these stripes that the embroidery is worked before the two lengths of fabric are seen together. Wide bands in red and black are woven at the end of the 9 yard long ‘puthkuli’. The women embroider in between this bands creating a striking ‘pallav’.  The embroidery is worked on the cloth to produce a rich embossed effect on the surface. 

The women do not refer to a stitching pattern as we do for creating cross stitch designs. Out of practice, they create the design on the cloth without tracing the pattern or referring any books.  The merging of embroidery is so well that it often mistaken for woven pattern. 

Common designs

The tribal women beloved that their work is the tribute to the nature. This is the reason why their designs usually symbolised the nature and daily cycle of life, celestial bodies like sun and moon and motifs from the animal kingdom, geometric designs are also commonly used in Today embroidery .

There are different design for various occasions like for happy grave occasion the embroidery is very elaborate. In ancient times, veggies fibers are used as thread, but nowadays threads are used. 

Keeping the art form alive

In an effort to fortify the tribal community. The unique Toda embroidery style  was given the GI tag, in the year 2013 nowadays, only 200-400 women practiced the embroidery style. Many training programs has been facilitating by the Development federation of India and Tribal cooperative market have been setup and much more programs will come to preserve the art form for generations to come. 

Need to draw a line between inspection and plagiarism 

In modern fashion industry, there is never ending debate over authentic appropriation and intellectual property.  Designers do experiment with the original work, but the original work is slowly fading due to modernization. We need to protect the tradition first. 

Despite the protection ensured by GI certificate exquisite designs of many artisan and tribal embroidery are imitated and sold cheaply by many labels as authentic, hence belittling the dignity of Provence. 

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