The Tripura bamboo handloom: when a hill community weaves its own identity

The bamboo mats of Tripura — woven so fine they bend like cloth — are a craft of the indigenous hills, and their weavers are now exporting to design houses and hotels.

The trade has brought money and a new kind of argument: who owns the patterns, the community or the buyers who commission them?

The weavers’ cooperative answer: a design archive, registered in the weavers’ own names.