Organic Stinging Nettle Weaving

In the heart of Nagaland’s Phek district, surrounded by rice fields and forests, the Chakhesang women weavers of Artisans Sustainable Development Foundation have traditionally used handpicked, hand-spun fibers from a stinging nettle plant native to the region. Artisans Sustainable Development Foundation was founded to help propel the local skill of nettle weaving and provide an economic outlet for the artists’ innovative designs.

The spinning and weaving of stinging nettle is increasingly rare. Stinging nettle is foraged from the wild once a year in early winter, and in a long and laborious process, strips of the fiber are retted, dried, thigh-reeled into twine, and hand-spun using a drop spindle. It is alternated with cotton in the warp and weft and strip-woven on backstrap looms. The flexibility of the portable loom enables women to work from their homes.

A design element unique to the identity of a classic Thebvora or nettle shawl is a minimal black center-stripe, which a weaver once described as the “eye of the cloth,” giving it life.

Artisans Sustainable Development Foundation has reintroduced a new generation of weavers to use nettle as an accent material and color, finished with natural dyes and incorporated into contemporary textile designs. This has opened a market beyond the village, providing essential income for the women weavers.

In creating nettle products for new markets, it is Artisans Sustainable Development Foundation’s hope to keep alive not only their material culture, but also the identity of their people whose natural resources are at risk of being lost through forces of development.