Jamdania is a small family workshop — one address, one loom family, no factory. Every saree on this site was woven on our own tati, by a weaver we know by name.
Jamdani is one of the oldest hand-weaving traditions in the world. UNESCO calls it an "intangible cultural heritage"; we just call it the family trade. For three generations, our weavers have sat at the same kind of loom — a horizontal pit loom, a pair of bamboo shafts, an extra weft of finer cotton, and the patience to lift each motif by hand thread by thread.
We started Jamdania because we wanted to sell directly, the way our grandparents did. The math is simple: a real handloom Jamdani takes a week (sometimes a month, for the heavy bridal pieces). The middleman chain that has grown up around the trade — wholesaler, distributor, retail showroom — eats most of the price and leaves the weaver with what's left. We took out the middle. The price you see is roughly half of what the same saree would cost in a market stall, and the wage that reaches the loom is roughly double.
"Hand-woven" is a phrase that gets used loosely. We mean it strictly:
One — pure handloom. No power loom. No mechanical jacquard. The motifs are inserted by hand on a discontinuous extra weft. If you turn one of our sarees over, you'll see the threads on the back, exactly the way Jamdani has been woven since the 16th century.
Two — pure materials. Cotton yarn from local mills; silk (when we use it) from Rajshahi. No polyester. No machine-shine. The drape and breath of a real Jamdani come from natural fibres — there is no substitute, and we don't try.
Three — woven at our address. The loom is in our family workshop at 70/A, Dhaka Housing, North Adabor. Same address, same loom, same family. Walk in any working day; the tati will be running.
We work in small batches — six to twelve sarees on the loom at a time. Pricing runs from BDT 1,500 for our entry-level cotton weaves up to BDT 5,000 for the heavier half-silk and bridal pieces. Once a particular saree is gone, the next one is always a little different — that is the nature of the craft, and (we think) part of the point.
Browse the current collection on the Products page, or come visit the workshop. Tea is on.
— The Jamdania family
