Silk fabrics of Narmohan Das on display in the stall at Assam Mahotsav. Telegraph picture

Jorhat, Dec. 19: A small-time silk weaver from Assam has caught the attention of reputed international textile designer, Nigel Atkinson, who has purchased large quantities of especially woven golden and white threads from him.

“It’s a dream come true that such a famous designer has liked my products. Atkinson has visited me several times and has purchased large quaintly of silk yarns,” Narmohan Das, whose products are on display at the ongoing Assam Festival here, said.

Atkinson, an UK-based designer who supplied fabrics to French couturier King of Cling — Azzedine Alaia and Italian designer Romeo Gigli — who also works in luxurious fabrics, said, “Das’s silks have a raw beauty which are worth preserving and supporting.”

“For quite sometime now I have commissioned fabrics from him that have been used in residential projects internationally, as the base for embroidered fabric panels, upholstery, rugs and shawls,” Atkinson said through e-mail to The Telegraph.

In an article, which had appeared in the Cover magazine in 2010, Atkinson had said, “My awareness of the cultural importance of fabrics has increased with frequent travelling. It is a different experience to look at the textiles in the museum or gallery but so much more meaningful if you see them at source.”

The magazine also showed a picture of a muga cloth supplied by Das on which Atkinson had worked an innovative, embroidered feature.

Das said he wove muga and eri cloth in a different way as a result of which he had drawn the attention of Atkinson and another designer, Elena Dickson, also from UK.

“While the usual way of making a muga yarn is by using 10 filaments. I use eight and that is why my cloth is much finer and lighter. I also do not starch the fine muga yarn which makes it easier to handle and is the usual procedure,” Das said.

In muga, Das also works with waste yarn (ghisha huta), which is usually thrown away and makes stoles out of these.

With the off-white eri silk yarn, too, Das makes stoles, bedside rugs, music mats and bedspreads, the export price of which goes upto Rs 2,500 per square feet.

Das, who has directly trained 250 women weavers and has a workforce of about 600 working for him, said all of them had been taught to weave in the plain, twill and basket styles by him.

“The USP of my fabrics is that they are 100 per cent eco-friendly. Silk is a natural fibre and the nine dyes, which I use, are also natural,” he said.

Das extracts dyes himself from xilikha, turmeric, cow dung and henna and imports indigo from Andhra Pradesh and mixes these colours to make nine dyes in total.

“I learnt the art of extracting a dye from cow dung from a village in Singhania, Rajasthan, where this is practised in many families.”

Das claims that his silks have been exported to France, UK, US, Germany, Malaysia and Japan.