Couple of years back when me and my brother first went to noapara, Narayangonj. we felt the entire place resonate with the steady rhythmic clicking of rudimentary bamboo looms. Narayanganj is one of the hubs where we started our journey for Midraar Jamdani collection.
The best known and most popular textile of Bangladesh is the Jamdani.The word Jamdani is of Persian origin from Jam meaning flower and Dani a vase of container. For over ten centuries, the Dhaka and just outside of dhaka area has been renowned for this fine fabric. So fine was its texture and quality that it was said to be woven with the "thread of the winds" and the Greek and the Roman texts mention the“Gangetic Muslins”as one of the most coveted luxury items for kings and their retinues, for whom Jamdani fabrics became a most desired item of clothing.A light, translucent fabric jamdani is usually made in lengths of six yards and worn primarily as a sari.Trading accounts reveal how the fabric travelled to the Courts of the Mughals in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, and became a most prized item in the overland caravan trade from Dhaka through to Agra, Bokhara, Samarkand and further west in Asia. Later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, over a hundred different assortments were exported by the European companies from the Soubah of Bengal to the ports of Hamburg, London, Madrid, Copenhagen and elsewhere in Europe.The most treasured were and finest quality of jamdani weaves from Dhaka.