Imagine the fairy tales lost in your childhood of lovely princesses on high towers weaving magical cloths; ethereal creatures capturing moonbeams to sew a cloak. All this comes to mind watching a young girl pull from the lotus stems soft fibers as fragile as a spider’s silk. These she will spin together to form a stronger thread, adding upon it length as the coils rise higher. She will need 120,000 long stems of the dark pink lotus to gather enough yarn to weave her gift: a set of robes for her revered Abbot who resided at the Golden Peacock Feather Monastery.

This is no fairy tale. In a remote village called East Kyain Khan on the shores of Inle Lake ninety years ago, a lay devoted to her revered Abbot had wanted to present him a set of robes woven from the most unique and pure materials. Plucking the large-petal lotus blossoms from the lake to offer at shrines, she noticed some filaments trailing from the ends of the cut stems. After many exhausting experiments, she managed to spin this web-like silk into longer and thicker threads. From that point on, it was easy, for weaving is a national industry that all country girls learn. She and her close friends painstakingly gathered enough stems and wove a splendid robe.

When the set of robes was presented to the Abbot, in appreciation of her creativity, he declared that henceforth her original name of Daw Sar Oo (Madam Sparrow Egg) will be replaced with Daw Kyar Oo. (Madam Lotus Egg.)

Unfortunately she left no descendants to continue her work, but her friends’ grandchildren are now carrying on a unique form of weaving unheard of anywhere else in the world.

The best fibers come from the dark pink lotus stems, which must be used within three days of being plucked. The first harvest is preceded with ritual offerings to the Spirits of the Lake, with flowers, incense, popped rice and prayers. The lotus grow wild and they cannot be cultivated. Since a higher water-level means longer stems as well as better filaments, they are collected at the time of the early monsoon, up to the end. During the dry months the stems are shorter and the fibers not as abundant.

The long stems have a thorny surface which must be scraped smooth with a handful of coconut husks. Then about five stems are held in one hand, and a small blade used to circle around the whole fistful at about four inches from the end. Then this is broken off and pulled at the same time, so silken filaments are pulled out from the cut ends. They are laid on a table surface kept moistened, and with a quick turn of a wrist the fibers are rolled into a thicker thread. The next batch is twisted onto the end of the previous one so that bit by bit, the thread grows. It is inconceivable how much work goes into getting enough thread.

Even then, the hard work is not over: the skeins are washed, starched, spun on different hand-turned machines that are never seen in any other weaver’s workshop. The original ladies themselves had designed and built them. The strange contraptions in use at present look as if they were the first ones used. The machines, all made of wood and bamboo, with some parts lacquered to be long lasting, are smooth and shiny with age.

With a strong tradition of weaving in the country, whether of the country girls of the dry central plains or of the many diverse minorities all over the vast country, Myanmar had long been producing the best hand-woven silk and the most intricately woven tribal cottons. But even these works of high standards pale when compared to this one born out of devotion and hard work, the lotus fabric.