পাট · Ivory, luminous, soft in the fall
Where Muga is gold, Paat is light. It is the mulberry silk of Assam — spun brilliant white, and the fibre a weaver reaches for when a drape has to catch the light rather than hold it.
Paat comes from Bombyx mori, the mulberry silkworm, reared on carefully tended mulberry rather than forest trees. That domestication is what gives the thread its evenness: a smoother, rounder filament than the wild silks, and a surface that reflects almost uniformly.
In Sualkuchi it is the silk of ceremony. The white Paat mekhela sador with a red or gold border is the image most people carry of an Assamese woman dressed for Bihu, and it is what a bride's family will most often commission first.
Its whiteness is also a discipline. Undyed Paat shows every irregularity in the weave, so the finest work — the tightest borders, the most exact motifs — tends to be done on it. A weaver's reputation is made on Paat.
Dyed, it takes colour more brilliantly than any other Assamese silk, which is why the deep reds, blues and greens in our occasional collection are almost always Paat.
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