Solapur Bags

Pishvi in marathi, kothada in guajarati, chila in kannada and sanchi in teulgu, thaili in hindi or a chick tote bag… call it whatever but it remains a simple and useful basic bag of its kinds. Everyone uses such a bag at least once in life and many have their lives revolving around this.

I pass through many street shops selling such basic bags everywhere, but there is something different about such shops in Solapur. They also sell bags unique to Solapur and those are the bags stitched from chaddars. These bags are referred to as ‘Chadarichya pishvya’ in Marathi.

Bag seller @ Lakshmi market, Solapur

Variety of Bags at the above shop

These bags are made from the jacquard woven chaddar fabrics which either are excess pieces from the loom or are initial weave trials or either have some weave defects. These are purchased from the weaving units and are locally stitched on a small scale for local market sales. You might find this a very mundane thing but NO! It is an ingenious sustainable product. Made from excess/waste, this bag also adds to employment to some extent and is also very useful.
I got the above bag from my grandfather and he tells me that it is about 25 years old. And that means it is older than me! He had bought this bag for Rs. 3/-. Now you just have to add a zero to this which makes it Rs. 30/-. Striking motifs unambiguously woven into colorful stripes are simply superb. These bags are my current subject of interest for exploration. Wait for it... it is going to be legendary!!