“When I was little, I used to explore my mum’s sari trunk case. She was of Indian origin, although she was born in Malaysia. She used to have a great many beautiful saris. Sometimes she used to tell me stories about all the different saris she had owned.

One of the things she told me, something that has stuck in my mind to this day, concerned Kashmir silk saris. She told me that Kashmir silk was so soft that you could squeeze even a large piece of it into a small ball.

Many years later, more than thirty years after I migrated to England, I came across a similar Kashmir silk sari in a shop in Bath. Being a textile artist, I bought the sari and used it in one of my textile art pieces – partly for artistic reasons but also in memory of my mum.”

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Aran Illingworth