Embroidery is one of the oldest ways humans have found to make cloth beautiful — and few arts have changed as much, or as little, over the centuries. The stitches endure; the hands, the materials and the makers have travelled a long road.
✨ Fun fact: The very richest old embroidery was worked in real gold and silver wire, with seed pearls and even precious stones — which is why a single royal garment could be worth a small fortune in its thread alone.
As a house devoted to handwork, we love tracing how embroidery grew from a craft of kings into the living art it is today.
The oldest stitches
Needle and thread are ancient companions. Long before machines, embroidery was how the wealthy set themselves apart — cloth worked with coloured silk and gold thread is described in the oldest texts and carved on ancient sculpture. From the very beginning, to embroider was to turn ordinary fabric into something precious.
The Mughal golden age
In India, embroidery reached a glittering height under the Mughals. The emperors kept whole imperial workshops — karkhanas — of master craftsmen, and brought with them the refined floral taste of Persia. This was the great age of zardozi, embroidery in real gold and silver wire, pearls and gems, lavished on royal robes, canopies and even elephant trappings. It was also when the delicate white-on-white chikankari of Lucknow flowered, a craft tradition often credited to the Mughal empress Nur Jahan. The flowering plant, the buti and the tree of life — motifs we still stitch today — entered Indian cloth in these years.
Embroidery across the land
Away from the court, embroidery grew quietly in every region, passed from mother to daughter. Kashmir worked its fine sozni needlework into shawls the world would covet; Punjab made its joyful phulkari; Bengal stitched soft old saris into new life as kantha; Gujarat and Kutch sparkled with mirror work; the hills of Himachal produced the double-sided Chamba rumal; Rajasthan glinted with gota-patti; and Lucknow added the shimmer of mukaish. Each carried its own language of stitch and symbol.
The colonial turn
By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the world wanted Indian embroidery — above all the Kashmir shawl, whose curving boteh (paisley) set off a craze across Europe. But the same age brought a hard turn: industrial mills and machine-made trimmings flooded the market, and as the old courts and princely patrons faded, many hand traditions lost the wealth that had sustained them. Some crafts came close to disappearing.
Revival and recognition
The twentieth century fought back. After Independence, reformers and craft revivalists — among them Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay — worked to rescue dying embroideries, organise artisans and find them new markets. Today many of these crafts are protected by Geographical Indication tags, from Lucknow's chikankari to Kashmir's sozni and Punjab's phulkari, recognising them as treasures rooted in their place.
Embroidery today
Now the art lives a double life. Computerised machines can stitch dense embroidery in minutes, and much of the “gold” work you see is made with metallic-coated threads rather than real gold. Yet precisely because the machine can imitate so much, true hand embroidery is treasured more than ever — as heirloom, as luxury, and as the pride of designers who carry it onto the world's runways. The materials have changed; the magic of a stitch made by hand has not.
Embroidery at Khinkhwab
We weave brocade by hand, but we love embroidery just as dearly, and keep its living traditions close. Discover the shimmering gota and zardozi work of our Aayna edit, and the airy white-on-white grace of our Lucknawi chikankari — centuries of needlework, carried gently forward.
Frequently asked questions
How old is the art of embroidery?
Embroidery is one of the most ancient decorative crafts — cloth worked with coloured and gold thread is recorded in the earliest texts and depicted on ancient sculpture, long predating any machine.
How did embroidery change under the Mughals?
The Mughals raised it to a courtly art, sponsoring imperial workshops and introducing Persian floral designs. It was the great age of zardozi — gold-and-silver embroidery with pearls and gems — and of Lucknow's fine chikankari.
How is embroidery made today?
Much modern embroidery is made by computerised machine using metallic-coated and synthetic threads, while traditional hand embroidery — far more time-consuming — survives as a treasured, artisanal luxury.
Sources & further reading
- Histories of Indian embroidery and the Mughal karkhanas.
- Studies of regional Indian embroidery and twentieth-century craft revival.
