Recently my wife went shopping in the Johri Bazaar and came home with some spools & a couple of cards of gota ribbons. When I asked her what she would do with them she said that they were for a saree. But she had no idea which saree she would use them on. Between you & me I doubt if she even has a saree that could be trimmed with gota ribbon. That is the appeal & the use of gota in Rajasthan.
To put it simply gota is lace made with silver or gold colored metal or plastic threads.
In Rajasthan, gota trimmed clothes for men, women & children are used on all festive & ceremonial occasions and marriages & marriages proposals, celebration of the birth of the latest child of the family or even the last journey to the funeral pyre of the lady of the house. Even the idols of our deity are dressed with costumes trimmed & decorated with various types of gota. Our holy books are treasured in swatches hemmed with gota. Gota work is even used in making enchanting wall hangings.
Gota work or lappe-ka-kaam has seen the days when pure silver & pure gold threads were used to make these ribbons to trim the clothes of Royalty & people of Rajasthan. These, gold & silver gota, ribbons were in use till about as recently as 1970s. But due to the high prices these metals command now a days, plastic and other metal thread ribbons are in vogue today. The metals with which they are made may have changed but their use has not lessened or their demand decreased in these modern times among the Rajasthani women.
This Jaipur! 
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