Chanderi Weaving
Kamla Devi
Chanderi, Ashoknagar, Madhya Pradesh
Gold-threaded Chanderi, woven on a pit loom her grandmother built.
Kamla Devi is a third-generation Chanderi weaver who works from a two-loom workshop at home. She specialises in sheer cotton-silk sarees and dupattas with hand-inserted zari butis.
- 32
- years weaving
- 6
- family members supported
- 3
- pieces for sale
At the loom with Kamla
Kamla Devi, Chanderi Weaving
The film is being edited and will appear here.
Kamla's story
Kamla learned to throw a shuttle at nine, sitting on the edge of her grandmother's pit loom while the older women sang to keep the rhythm. By fifteen she was weaving her own dupattas, and by twenty she could set a full saree warp alone — a job that takes three days of patient counting.
When power-loom imitations flooded the Chanderi market in the early 2010s, middlemen cut her rates by half. For three years she wove only on order, and her daughters began looking for work in Bhopal.
Through the collective she now sells directly to buyers across India. Each piece carries a tag with her name. She has trained two young women from her lane, and her elder daughter has returned to the loom.
“A machine can copy the pattern. It cannot copy the patience.”
Woven by Kamla
70% of every sale here goes to Kamla.