India is home to traditional wear & handicrafts from hundreds & thousands of years. Every state & city in India has its own tradition & culture along with this they have their own traditional wear and handicrafts which were created by artisans long ago and the art is being carried by their family till now.
As you all know Karnataka has many different traditional products like Ilkal Saree, Bidri ware, Patteda Anchu Sarees, Kinnal Toys, Guledgudda khana, & ChannaPatna Toys, and many others. These products have a history of hundreds of years and the art is kept alive by the family, village.
Today we will talk about one of the famous traditional wear of Karnataka & Maharashtra which is Guledgudda khana. This fabric is known to be invented in the 8th Century under the Chalukya Dynasty where this Gulegudda Khun blouse piece is offered to the goddess along with a saree. Khana is a fabric that is woven using viscose silk by cotton materials. This fabric has beautiful and unique patterns of motifs which give the fabric a shiny & grand look. The fabric was used as a blouse along with the traditional Ilkal Saree which makes both a perfect match. But as the popularity of the Khana fabric increased, Now the khana fabric is used to make sarees, dupattas, pillow covers, and other home decorative items.
The Khun fabric was first weaved in handloom, but as the new generations came the interest in weaving has rapidly fallen down because of the low wages and hard work in it, So the weaving tradition was declining day by day. But nowadays many small start-ups like us Silkal.in which are focused on helping the weavers & keeping the weaving tradition alive. We are helping the weavers to get a good amount for the products they weave and selling their products online. Now many of the families started weaving again and taking it to the next level by creating designs and patterns. The Khun sarees have huge demands throughout India.
The special property of this fabric is its unique design, used raw materials being silk and cotton. Due to the extreme heat of these regions, Khana materials were also produced in combination with cotton as weft because of the high cost of silk. Nowadays the fabric is widely used not just for blouses but also for sarees, dress materials, and other home decors like pillow cover bags, etc. We as Indians should support our traditional arts and products which will the artisans and weavers and along it will keep our culture and tradition alive.
