For centuries, traditional designs that embellished sarees have been drawn on grid paper. For these drawings, a craftsman makes perforated cards - a kind of binary system, ancient picasa of the computer - that guides threads through the handloom according to the motif. These are called ‘naksha patta’. Each card corresponds to a single line of weaving. A design generally involves a few hundred cards. These punched cards are characteristic of the Jacquard loom.
