Fruit of the Loin Loom: Single mother takes traditional Nagaland heirloom places

Meet Jesmina Zeliang, who has taken traditional handwoven textiles from the villages of Nagaland to New York and beyond.
Fruit of the Loin Loom: Single mother takes traditional Nagaland heirloom places

The stunning textiles and handicrafts from the Northeast need no introduction in India. And now, thanks to brands such as Heirloom Naga, traditional weaves from the quaint courtyards of Dimapur in Nagaland have travelled to various living rooms across the world.

The brand, which works with some 460 women weavers across the state, has been instrumental in designing, marketing and showcasing Naga textiles beyond the frontiers of the state and exports to almost 20 countries, catering to the exclusive luxury handicraft market.

For Jesmina Zeliang, founder of Heirloom Naga, the journey started back in 1993 in her hometown -Dimapur - where she spotted her exceptionally skilled neighbour weaving sarongs and shawls in her tiny verandah. This gave Zeliang the idea to put together a collection of Naga textiles with the help of a few local weavers, which she took to Delhi's famous Surajkund Mela.

The debut collection of soft furnishings in a monochrome palette was a blockbuster hit, and soon, she started to get orders from the likes of Fabindia, Shyam Ahuja and Central Cottage Industries, to name a few.

The success encouraged Zeliang to further reimagine the traditional textiles with a dash of modernity for an audience outside the state. Within a year, 50 more weavers joined in to create pure handmade cotton sarongs, Angami shawls and cushions covers with signature tassels - a value addition that proved to be a unique selling point.

All of Heirloom Naga’s textiles are woven on the traditional loin looms in Nagaland. The loin loom or the back strap loom is an ingeniously simple device - the loom is made of several bamboo sticks around which a continuous warp is wound.

The entire length of the warp is stretched out and not wound over a beam as in frame looms. Weaving on this loom has always been done only by women. However, poverty forced most of them to abandon the loom and work the fields as farm labourers.

Once the brand was established and the orders started pouring in from big international stores as well, Zeliang got the local skilled women to join hands to develop a sustainable business model. They went for the "cluster approach", where based on their skill sets, women were clubbed in multiple groups all across the state and led by a team leader.

As Zeliang  explains, "Being a single parent myself for close to two decades, I completely empathise with women who struggle at so many levels. Today, we have at least 40 individual weavers from urban areas (mostly mothers with young kids), and around 40 odd clusters with four to 20 weavers in each group. All designs are exclusive to our studio, the yarn is distributed from our office warehouse and we have an all-girls team for quality control, inspection and to achieve standardisation."

Now, three decades since its inception, Heirloom Naga is looking at expanding its product portfolio in a big way. "We are developing a collection of handcrafted wall decor items, furniture and tableware products in natural materials such as bamboo, cane and water reed in natural dyes, as well as woven tapestries as textiles art for connoisseurs. We are also weaving floor coverings in cane and curated eri silk shawls to produce luxury goods," Zeliang says.

In a conflicted state with slow development and limited economic opportunities, the challenge to sustain and grow even in a pandemic is a feat in itself. With brands like these, the cottage industries are tethered to provide a livelihood for local families.

"We want to emphasise on skilling our artisans, and to push that, we started a Crafts Centre in Dimapur last year and employed 40 male artisans. There are 15 weavers from two remote villages of Nagaland living in our hostels, and once they learn the skills they can go back and practice it from home without being uprooted," she sums up.

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The New Indian Express
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