The ZARISPIRE Lineage
Six Centuries by the Loom
A Banarasi weaving family, told through the records it kept - from an 1848 land deed to the silk we weave for you today.
The roots
Older than the records that name us
Our family has lived by the loom for over six hundred years. The earliest paper we still hold is a land record from 1848 - proof of a household already rooted in Varanasi, the eternal city on the Ganga, long before any of us were born.
On the ledgers of empire
Taxed by a British India
By the early 1900s our looms were known well beyond Banaras - dressing royal households across the Subcontinent, weaving Kimkhwab for the monasteries of Tibet, silk for Milan, and even the Black Gilaf for the Holy Kaaba. This 1929 receipt records a tax of Rs. 288 paid to the British Indian Government - a small line in a very long account.
The firm, on record
A name made official
In 1934 Haji Yarmohammad put the family trade on paper - registering the firm and settling its dues. Two documents survive from that moment: the registration itself and the payment receipt. Tap the cards to turn from one to the other.
Registration
Payment receipt
Weavers, organised
A voice for the looms of Banaras
Our forefather Haji Nur Mahomed helped organise the silk weavers of Banaras into a cooperative - this letter survives, praising the work. The craft was never ours alone; it belonged to a whole community of hands.
Along the silk route
From our looms to Tibet
Our grandfather, Haji Mohammad Yamin Girast, carried our silk along the old trade routes - here with a customer from Tibet, where our Kimkhwab dressed the monasteries. Trade, for us, was always a conversation between cultures.
Drawn by hand
The Naksha, a century old
Before software, before print, there was the Naksha - the weaver's hand-drawn blueprint. This one is a century old: every motif plotted by hand, a map for the loom and a portrait of a tradition kept alive thread by thread.
The hands before ours
The Forefathers
Haji Yarmohammad
Put the family trade on record, in firm and ledger (1929 - 1934).
Haji Nur Mahomed
Organised the silk weavers of Banaras into a cooperative.
Haji Siddiq Ullah
Held the family's standing through changing times.
Haji Mohammad Yamin Girast
Carried our silk along the trade routes to Tibet.