About 10 kilometres from Mingora, just past Saidu Sharif on the road towards Marghazar, there's a village where you can hear the shawls before you see them. The steady clack of wooden handlooms comes from house after house, workshop after workshop.
This is Salampur. On official maps it's called Islampur, but ask anyone in Swat and they'll call it Salampur. And if you've ever owned a Swati shawl, there's a very good chance it was woven here.
A village built around the loom
Weaving isn't a side business in Salampur. It's the heart of the village. Most families are connected to the trade in one way or another: weaving, dyeing, finishing, embroidering, selling. Local estimates put the number of handlooms in the village in the thousands, and many more weavers work in the surrounding area.
Skills are passed down the old way, from parent to child and master to apprentice. Many of the weavers working today learned by sitting beside a father or grandfather at the loom, first winding yarn, then learning to throw the shuttle, and finally weaving shawls of their own.
How a Salampur shawl is made
The yarn
Salampur's weavers mostly work with fine wool. Much of it is imported: for our Swati shahtoosh, the wool comes from Australia and is spun into yarn in China before it arrives in Swat. Fine, even yarn is what gives these shawls their softness and drape.
The loom
The weaving itself is done on handlooms. The weaver sits at the loom, feet working the pedals that lift and lower the warp threads, hands throwing the shuttle back and forth and pulling the beater to pack each row tight. It's rhythmic, physical work, and a skilled weaver can tell by sound and feel alone whether the tension is right.
Traders and weavers in Salampur often refer to shawls by number rather than name. These numbers describe the grade and construction of the cloth, and experienced buyers know exactly what to expect from each one.
The finishing
Once off the loom, shawls are washed, finished and inspected. Some are sold plain or with woven borders. Others go on to be hand-embroidered, which is where the floral borders, buti and full-embroidered designs come from. For our embroidered Swati shahtoosh pieces, that embroidery is done by hand in Multan.
Why handloom still matters
Power looms are faster and cheaper, so why does Salampur still weave by hand?
- The feel. Handloom cloth has a softness and give that machine-woven cloth often lacks. The weaver adjusts tension by feel, row by row.
- The character. No two handwoven shawls are exactly alike. Small variations in the weave are the mark of a person, not a machine.
- The livelihoods. Every handloom supports a family. Buying handwoven keeps those looms working and those skills alive.
The challenges
Life at the loom isn't easy. Much of Salampur's wool is imported, so its price rises and falls with the rupee. Floods in the valley, economic ups and downs, and competition from cheap machine-made shawls have all made the last few years hard. And weaving is long, physical work.
That's part of why we think it matters to buy honestly labelled Swati shawls, from people who know where they come from. When the name "Swati" is used on cheap imported shawls, the real weavers of Salampur lose out.
Why Salampur matters to us
Attan is a Swati brand. Salampur is part of the valley we call home. When you buy a Swati shawl from us, you're buying something woven on a handloom in Swat, by hands that learned the craft in that same village.
We're proud of that, and we want you to know exactly where your shawl was made, and by whom.
Explore our Swati shahtoosh and Everyday Swati collections, or read the story behind the name "Swati shahtoosh".