The Hindu : National : Jute is eco-friendly and attractive too

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Thursday, Aug 02, 2007
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National

Jute is eco-friendly and attractive too

S.S. Kavitha

Products at a jute fair in Madurai blend excellence with creativity and innovation

Photo: S. James

Artistic finery: Visitors looking at wall hangings at the exhibition in Madurai on Wednesday. —

MADURAI: Jute is often considered an alternative to plastic. The eco-friendly fibre can be used to make hats, footwear, shirts and pants, bags, suitcases, pillow covers, files etc. It is also economical and long lasting.

This was the view of several visitors who dropped into Chellam Saraswathi Maligai on Kamarajar Road in Madurai and loosened their purse strings for some of the choice articles that were on display at the jute fair.

Davindar Kumar from Delhi beckons every visitor with ivory-coloured cotton-jute mixed bed spreads and pillow covers while Dipak Sarkar has displayed a wide range of jute jewellery, from ear rings to hair clips.

Artisans from Kolkata have flooded the stalls with footwear, hammocks and swinging chairs all made of jute in attractive colours.

Biswan Das gives you a bagful of material, allowing you to witness that jute bags can hold a lot of weight unlike plastic bags which tend to rip when the.

Vinitha, a fashion designer from Chennai, has finely embroidered dress material in attractive colours.

Exclusive jute materials and cotton-mixed jute materials and jute-embroidery work on cotton dress materials offer several choices for visitors.

S.K. Karthik from Gobichettipalayam has displayed files with motifs of traditional and rural arts printed on them.

“The awareness level is slowly on the rise but still people shun jute materials, associating them with gunny bags,” says T. Ayyappan, Marketing Promotion Officer of Jute Manufacturers’ Development Council.

It is the Council that has taken the initiative to organise the fair in order to popularise the characteristics of the brown fibre. Jute is not only eco friendly but also involves one-time investment, he says. The fair aims at providing a platform for artisans to market their products besides motivating people to go in for natural bio-degradable products. The fair has 30 participants from across the country. It also displays attractive jute and jute-blended yardage, a range of colourful photo frames, wall hangings with cartoon characters and rural landscapes done in exquisite embroidery, and patchwork on jute, files and lamp shades with a compelling effect.

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