Banaras, Naturally: Building Repeatable Natural Dyeing for Handwoven Silk

Natural dyeing is easy to romanticise. A plant, a pot, a beautiful colour, a photograph in sunlight—and the story appears complete.

For us at HKV Benaras, that is exactly where the difficult part begins.

We are working toward a much more demanding question: can natural colour become repeatable enough, stable enough and documented enough to sit seriously on Banarasi silk? Not as a one-off craft experiment, but as a textile process that can eventually move from small trials to sarees, dupattas, stoles and custom work without losing the character that makes natural dyes worth pursuing in the first place.

Why we are doing this

Banaras already carries an extraordinary vocabulary of weave. Kadhwa, Jangla, Tanchoi, tissue, Butidaar, Jamdani, Kinkhwab and many other structures can change the way a surface reflects light and how colour is perceived. Natural dyeing gives us another vocabulary to work with—one that is less flat, often more responsive to material and light, and deeply connected to process.

But we do not want to add “naturally dyed” as a marketing adjective while leaving the process vague. If a customer is buying a precious handwoven textile, we should be able to explain what colour was used, how it was developed, what the limitations are, and how the textile should be cared for.

Our long-term ambition is to increase the role of natural dyes substantially in what we make. We are not claiming that every HKV textile is naturally dyed today. This is ongoing development work, and we would rather show that work honestly than pretend the transition is already complete.

Natural does not mean unmeasured

One of the earliest lessons has been that small changes can produce very different results. The same dye material can shift with water quality, pH, temperature, mordanting, concentration, reduction, oxidation, rinsing, drying and even the sequence in which the steps are carried out.

So our approach increasingly resembles a lab notebook alongside a dye vat.

For a trial, we want to know the weight of fibre, the percentage of dye on weight of fibre, the liquor ratio, pH, time, temperature, water quality, mordant or tannin treatment, reduction conditions where relevant, rinse sequence, final neutralisation and what the shade looks like after it has rested—not only when it first comes out of the bath.

We often begin with small silk trials before moving toward larger quantities. That makes experimentation slower in one sense, but much cheaper and more useful than discovering a problem after an entire loom-length of silk has been prepared.

The colours we are learning from

Our current natural-colour vocabulary is being built from materials including indigo, lac, manjistha (madder), pomegranate, harad, henna and catechu, alongside other experimental botanical sources.

Each behaves differently.

Indigo

Indigo has probably taught us the most about patience. Unlike many direct dye baths, indigo depends on reduction and oxidation. The colour you ultimately want is not simply “dissolved blue water.” The vat chemistry has to make the indigo available to the fibre, and the textile then develops its blue as it oxidises in air.

We have worked through questions around alkalinity, reduction strength, settling pigment, uneven uptake, washing and repeated dipping. A beautiful blue can still be a poor result if it rubs, streaks or cannot be reproduced.

Lac and reds

Lac has opened a range from crimson and wine tones toward deeper purples when combined thoughtfully with other colour systems. Manjistha gives us another red vocabulary—earthier, warmer and very different from a synthetic scarlet.

The challenge is not merely reaching a rich shade. We need to understand how that shade behaves on silk, with mordants, after washing, and under light.

Pomegranate, harad, henna and catechu

Tannin-rich materials are particularly interesting because they can play more than one role. They can contribute colour, prepare the fibre, and interact with metal salts to move a palette toward olive, brown, charcoal and aged gold.

For Banarasi textiles, these quieter colours matter. Natural dyeing does not have to mean only bright “eco colours.” An antique gold, mehendi olive, coffee brown or deep charcoal can sit beautifully with brocade and zari.

The failures are part of the colour library

Some of our most useful trials have not been the prettiest ones.

We have seen shades that looked convincing immediately and then faded too quickly. We have dealt with rubbing and bleeding, dull or streaked indigo, hard-water effects, incomplete reduction, excessive alkalinity and iron treatments that can push a colour too far or make silk feel less forgiving.

Those results matter because a natural-dye collection cannot be judged at the moment the fabric leaves the vat. A beautiful first dip is not enough.

For us, the real questions are: Does it repeat? Does it wash appropriately? Does the surface colour rub? How does it react to light? What happens when the water changes? Can we explain the care requirements honestly?

From a small trial to a Banarasi loom

There is another complication specific to what we do: we are not developing colour in isolation. The dyed silk eventually has to become weaving material.

That means the colour has to work with yarn preparation, warp and weft planning, design, zari, loom tension and the intended weave. A shade that is attractive as a loose silk sample may behave very differently once it becomes the ground behind dense motifs or sits beside metallic zari.

This is why our natural-dye work is increasingly tied to the way HKV thinks about product development as a whole. We want the dye record, the weave record and the maker record to belong to the same textile story.

A palette we can return to

Rather than chase an unlimited number of colours immediately, we are trying to build a smaller palette that can become recognisable and repeatable. Directions we are exploring include indigo royal and navy blues, lac wine, lac–indigo plum, manjistha brick reds, pomegranate antique golds, pomegranate–iron olives, henna browns, catechu coffee tones and tannin–iron charcoals.

The exact shade will always carry some natural variation. We do not want to erase that. The objective is to distinguish character from uncontrolled inconsistency.

What we want natural dyeing at HKV to become

We see three possibilities developing together.

First, a small but serious naturally dyed HKV range where the colour process is part of the product information rather than hidden behind a label.

Second, custom natural-colour work for clients who are willing to work within the possibilities and variations of the materials rather than demand an exact synthetic shade match.

Third, a growing process archive: recipes, trials, failures, observations, photographs and eventually fastness results that help us make better decisions from one batch to the next.

That archive matters to us because traditional knowledge and modern process discipline do not have to be enemies. Banaras has survived by adapting while keeping extraordinary technical knowledge alive. Our job is not to turn that knowledge into a laboratory specimen. It is to give it enough documentation and repeatability that it can continue to be used.

This is still work in progress

We will keep sharing the development as it becomes real: the vats that work, the ones that do not, the shades that make it to the loom, and the ones we reject.

If you are interested in a naturally dyed Banarasi piece, a custom colour direction, or simply want to follow the experiments, you can speak with us directly. We would rather begin with the material and the process than promise a colour the vat cannot honestly deliver.

HKV Benaras
Banaras, India
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