Research Information System
Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, 2026 (AHCI, Scopus)
This study examines Patola double ikat weavings produced in Patan, Gujarat, beyond their technical characteristics, focusing on how production processes, embodied knowledge, and cultural meaning are constructed. While existing literature has largely addressed Patola through historical description, stylistic classification, or technical complexity, the production process itself has rarely been examined as a practical field in which cultural meaning is produced and transmitted. Addressing this gap, the study reinterprets Patola weaving not as a completed textile object but as a living craft system sustained through practice, mastery transmission, and collective labor. The research adopts a qualitative and interpretive approach, drawing on fieldwork conducted in Patan in 2023, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, museum examination, and object-based analysis. Informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage framework, double ikat weaving is approached as an implicit craft pedagogy transmitted through repetition, intuition, and embodied experience. The findings demonstrate that motif, color, and composition acquire meaning relationally within technical processes, material constraints, ritual contexts, and social relations. Pre-weaving pattern planning and alignment precision emerge not merely as indicators of technical mastery but as a knowledge system intertwined with cultural memory, collective experience, and identity formation.