The floors of the new Parliament building will be covered in high-quality hand-knotted carpets that were meticulously woven by as many as 900 artisans from Uttar Pradesh for a whopping "10 lakh man-hours."
In the carpets of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, respectively, the new Parliament building, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated on Sunday, will feature exquisite motifs of the national bird peacock and the national flower lotus.
"Before stitching them into a single carpet in the form of a semi-circle to sync with the architecture of each of the Houses spread across 35,000 square feet of area," according to Obeetee Carpets, the over-100-year-old Indian company behind the project, "weavers crafted more than 150 carpets each for Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha."
"The weavers had to craft the carpets for halls measuring up to 17,500 square feet each. This posed a significant challenge for the design team, as they had to meticulously craft the carpet in separate pieces and seamlessly join them together, ensuring that the creative mastery of the weavers blended harmoniously to create a unified carpet that can sustain heavy footfall," Rudra Chatterjee, Chairman of Obeetee Carpets, said.
The look of Lok Sabha is based on Indian agave green with inspiration from the plumes of the Indian peacock, whereas the colors used in Rajya Sabha were primarily inspired by the shade of kokum red.
Laying accentuation on the complexities of the workmanship, he expressed that upwards of "120 knots per square inch" were woven to make the floor coverings, totalling "over 600 million knots".
Carpeting the Upper and Lower Houses of the new Parliament building took the weavers, who are from Uttar Pradesh's Bhadohi and Mirzapur districts, "10 lakh man-hours."
"We began the project in 2020 right in the middle of the pandemic. The weaving process started by September 2021, was over by May, 2022, and the installation commenced in November 2022. Crafting each carpet with a high density of 120 knots per square inch took approximately seven months," Chatterjee said.
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