TAPESTRIES OF LIFE

It is said that the island’s first queen was sighted 2,700 years ago spinning a dumbara mat – the most antique and traditional of Sri Lanka’s handlooms.

Their striking, bold simplicity has made them the go-to item for sophisticated drawing rooms and hotel lobbies today. In every centimetre of existence, they celebrate the halcyon simplicity of a now almost lost countryside.

Spun on simple wood looms into wall hangings, drapes, arras, mats, tapestries, and cushion covers, the fibre comes almost wholly from the prickly henna plant, which is broken down by hand, with the fleshy parts of the leaf removed. It takes about a day to process 100 leaves. They are then washed, dried in the sun, and combed into skeins. The fibre is then boiled with natural black, red, and yellow dyes.

The families who make them now come almost exclusively from a handful of villages such as Henawela and Menikhinna, some 15 miles from The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel, all of them belonging to the Kinnarayas, one of the lower castes of the Kandyan kingdom - the still living remnants of the old feudal "rajakariya" system which dominated the island until 1832. By means of this system, the king granted subjects land in exchange for services - anything from road or reservoir making to still more specific roles, like mat making. The feudal arrangement meant that whole families evolved into skilled artisans, expert at their particular craft. When the British abolished the system, many of the craftspeople continued their work, as they have here at Menikhinna.

The dumbara fabrics portray the classic and unvarying preoccupations of a lost agrarian world - elephants, deer, and birds; symbolic Buddhist and Hindu mythological motifs; and perhaps most striking of all, colourful geometric shapes of triangles and squares.