Bayaluseeme · Deccan Inland Plateau
This plain does not merely wear its textiles, it makes them, and four of them are registered geographical indications within eighty kilometres of one another. The Ilkal saree is the everyday drape of the whole of North Karnataka; the blouse worn with it is cut from Guledgudda khana, woven eight kilometres away and for no other purpose; the embroidery worked on both is kasuti; and the floor it is all folded away on is as likely as not a Navalgund durrie. It is one of the tightest craft clusters in India and almost nobody outside Karnataka can name it.
What is worn
Cotton body, art-silk or silk border and a red pallu carrying the tope teni design of stacked temple forms, joined to the body by interlocked loops rather than by stitching. Traditional colours run to pomegranate red, peacock green and parrot green, with a bridal shade called giri kumkum.
Worn for: Everyday, and in silk for weddings
A short-sleeved blouse cut from Guledgudda khana — a stiff, brightly figured cloth woven in blouse-length pieces on pit looms and sold as a piece rather than by the metre. It is woven for this one garment and nothing else.
Worn for: With the Ilkal saree
The nine-yard drape tucked between the legs at the back. In the Belagavi belt the Marathi nauvari and the Kannada kachche are the same drape under two names and are worn by neighbours in the same street.
Worn for: Everyday and ritual
A short white dhoti, a collarless shirt and a wound head cloth. The stiff conical pheta of the northern taluks and the loose rumal of the southern ones mark the two halves of the plain as clearly as speech.
Worn for: Everyday and ceremonial
The formal wardrobe of the Vijayapura and Belagavi old towns, unchanged in outline since the Adil Shahi period.
Worn for: Eid, weddings
Weaves and textiles
Woven on pit looms by several thousand weaver households in and around one town, with the body, border and pallu warped in different materials and joined on the loom. Registered as a geographical indication.
Blouse cloth woven in fixed short lengths, traditionally in silk and cotton with a dense small-figured pattern and a contrasting border. Registered as a geographical indication, and one of the very few Indian textiles defined by the single garment it is cut for.
Counted-thread embroidery worked without knots and without tracing, in four stitches — gavanti, murgi, negi and menthe — so that the work reads identically on both faces of the cloth. Motifs are architectural and processional: gopuras, palanquins, elephants, lamps. Registered as a geographical indication.
Heavy cotton floor durries, called jamkhana locally, woven in bold geometric and peacock designs on vertical looms by a small number of households. Registered as a geographical indication and down to a handful of working weavers.
Jewellery
Traditional dress of Bayaluseeme — garments, handloom weaves, GI-tagged textiles and jewellery. (9)