A century of royal silks: The Vijayalakshmi edit

The Royal Edit showcases 105 heirloom sarees by Vijayalakshmi Silks, celebrating their 105 years in business and Karnataka's rich silk heritage.

“How good would you be at something if you had been doing it for over a hundred years?”

In 1963, firmly established as Bangalore’s pre-eminent purveyors and curators of fine silks from across the country, VSL stepped out of the Pete and onto the high street. (SOURCED)

So runs the tagline of The Royal Edit—an ongoing exhibition of 105 heirloom sarees originally woven for the Mysore royal family by Vijayalakshmi Silks Limited (VSL), and recreated by them to commemorate their 105th year in business (they turned 100 in 2020, amid the Covid-19 pandemic). Judging by the rapidly filling order registers on opening day, pretty darn good!

The story of VSL is inextricably entwined with the history of silk in Karnataka. If India is the second-largest producer of silk in the world after China, Karnataka is India’s largest producer of mulberry silk, contributing a whopping 45% of the country’s output. Bengaluru itself is at the heart of India’s silk ecosystem, located between Asia’s largest silk cocoon market at Ramanagaram (45 kilometres southwest), India’s second-largest market at Sidlaghatta (65 kilometres north), the major sericulture centres of Kolar and Chintamani (70 and 85 kilometres northeast) and the Central Sericultural Germplasm Resource Centre at Hosur (45 kilometres southeast). Even the infamous traffic bottleneck in the middle of Bengaluru — Silk Board Junction— is part of the story.

Silk came from China to India through the maritime route – on the Coromandel coast, it was the Pallavas who, way back in the 7th century, first wove Chinese silk yarn into cloth, in their capital, Kanchipuram. In the 15th century, fleets of the Ming Dynasty-sponsored “treasure voyages” reached the Malabar coast. In the 16th century, Vijayanagara emperor Krishnadevaraya designated Kanchi as the empire’s silk weaving centre, enthusing the Devangas and the Saligars, master weavers from the Andhra country, to move to Kanchi, where they incorporated temple-inspired designs into their weaves, creating the iconic Kanjivaram saree.

The founding of Bengaluru Pete in 1537 attracted several weaving communities, making the town famous as a textile centre. But it wasn’t until the 1780s, when Tipu Sultan, mesmerised by a length of fine silk gifted to him by an ambassador from the Qing dynasty, decided to cultivate silkworms that sericulture began in right earnest. By the time his deputation had returned from Bengal with a batch of Chinese silkworms, 22 designated centres across the kingdom had begun mulberry farming. The silkworms adapted to the Mysore climate, evolving into a brand-new strain – Pure Mysore Race.

After Tipu’s death in 1799, sericulture went into decline until 1866, when it was revived by an Italian expert, Signor de Vecchi (Italy had by then become Europe’s premier producer of luxury silk, powered by technological innovation), who sourced silkworm eggs from Japan, which had begun to outpace China in expertise. In 1893, JN Tata took it further, bringing in a Japanese couple, the Odzus, to helm a free training school – the Tata Silk Farm – on land granted by Maharani Kempananjammanni at the edge of Basavanagudi. Reeled and woven silk from the Tata Silk Farm would win 10 gold medals at the London Silk Exhibition of 1912, bringing global acclaim to Bengaluru silk.

In 1911, Maharaja Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar attended the Delhi Durbar and was so taken with the fine silks worn by King George V that he ordered 32 cutting-edge powerlooms from Switzerland in 1912, as part of Mysore’s push towards industrialisation. The fluid, buttery-soft silk woven by those powerlooms — Mysore Silk — was among the first Indian products to be GI-tagged.

It was in this exciting milieu that a precocious 14-year-old called Devatha Adappa Venkat Ratnam Setty, scion of a trading family from Kolar, set up his very first store in Chickpet – Sree Vijayalakshmi Hall. In 1963, firmly established as Bangalore’s pre-eminent purveyors and curators of fine silks from across the country, VSL stepped out of the Pete and onto the high street, setting up the very first saree store on MG Road, the beloved landmark that we know as Vijayalakshmi Silks and Sarees.

The Royal Edit by VSL at Sabha on Kamaraj Road runs until April 24.

(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)