The Tripura bamboo handloom: when a hill community weaves its own identity
Tripura's bamboo-mat weavers are exporting designs — and arguing about who holds the patterns.
The bamboo mats of Tripura — woven so fine they bend like cloth — are a craft of the indigenous hills, and their weavers are now exporting to design houses and hotels.
The trade has brought money and a new kind of argument: who owns the patterns, the community or the buyers who commission them?
The weavers’ cooperative answer: a design archive, registered in the weavers’ own names.