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‘Woven air’: Bangladesh revives elite forgotten fabric
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Heritage fabric: A weaver uses a handloom to make traditional muslin cloth at the Dhakai Muslin Project facility in Narayanganj on Jan. 8. (AFP/Munir Uz Zaman)
W
ith wooden spinning wheels and hand-drawn looms, Bangladesh is painstakingly resurrecting a fabric once worn by Marie Antoinette and Jane Austen but long thought forever lost to history.
Dhaka muslin was stitched from threads so fine that popular folklore in European parlors held that a change in the light or a sudden rain shower would render its wearer apparently naked.
The textile once brought magnificent riches to the lands where it was spun.
But to revive it, botanists had to hunt halfway across the world and back for a plant believed to be gone from the face of the earth.
"Nobody knew how it was made," said Ayub Ali, a senior government official helping shepherd the revival project.
"We lost the famous cotton plant, which provided the special fine yarn for Dhaka muslin," he told AFP.
The muslin trade at one time helped turn the Ganges delta and what is now Bangladesh into one of the most prosperous parts of the world, historians say.
