Word To Use Today: ikat.

 Just as a dustbin man has (quite rightly) grown in status by being renamed a refuse collector, and will soon probably be further promoted to recycling operative or environmental health facilitator, so has the word ikat stepped in to bring a fresh wave of fashion and Eastern glamour to something...well, a bit tacky, quite honestly.

In 1970s England, we used to call ikat methods of colouring cloth tie-dye. It was mostly the preserve of hippies, who were known for their reeking goatskin coats, strangely-smelling tobacco, and tie-dyed T shirts:

photo by WayneRay

rather than for their surfeit of worldly goods.

To be in fashion you had to get a plain T shirt, tie it up really tightly with string, dip it a bowl of dye, and hope it'd turn into something kind of wheel-of-lifeish, you know? 

Generally, though, it just turned out blotchy. Ah well.

I've trawled through wikimedia commons for photos of people of the time wearing tie-dyed clothes, but it seems that most people were too busy being really really calm (or protesting) to bother with all the dyeing stuff. 

Things have changed since then (though there are some signs that they're changing back again). Nowadays we tend to like things a bit sparklier. Cleaner. More apparently expensive. 

And, perhaps for this reason, tie-dye has a new name, and ikat cloth has stormed its way into our homes.

Mind you, the faded splodges that were tie-dye is a glorious art form when it's ikat. 

The basic difference is that it's the yarn that's tie-dyed before weaving, not the finished cloth. Look at that T shirt, above. Then look at this :

photo of a sari by Sujit kumar

and this:

this was made in the middle of the 1800s in Samarkand

These are things of wonder.

And now?

Now in western homes ikat-style cloth is usually found in soft furnishings:

and it has all the excitement of an under-manager's sales meeting.

Ah well.

Word To Use Today: ikat. This is an Indonesian or Malay word which can mean cord, thread, knot, or bundle, or tie.