At a glance it reads as classical European ornament, and it is not. The motif comes from the architecture of old temples in southern India, and the resemblance is genuine rather than borrowed; ornament travelled in both directions for longer than either side tends to remember. Temple architecture of that kind is dense with carved repetition, and it is the rhythm of it rather than any one motif that survives the translation into cloth.
Nearly half silk and light at 240 g, so it behaves as a decorating cloth: curtains, blinds, cushions. The lampas structure is what gives the figure its slight relief against the ground. The horizontal repeat is 35 cm, a quarter of the 140 cm width, against a 66 cm vertical. Four colourways. Woven in India.
