A lasting imprint

In the late 1990s, when Craft Revival Trust started its explorations of the bylanes and corners of craft practice, amongst the first traditions tracked were those of handblock printing and dyeing.

The unearthing of the carved bust of the priest-king at Mohenjodaro draped in a shoulder cloth with trefoil motifs, references in ancient texts, visual and archaeological evidence all date the dyeing and patterning of textiles on the sub-continent back several millennia.

Of the many traditions of handblock printing that continue to be practised in India from the celebrated to the relatively unknown, the tradition of Bagh in Madhya Pradesh holds its own.
This bustling small township, known for its ancient Buddhist mural painted rock cut caves, is home to the Khatri chippas, the hereditary printing and dyeing community. The Khatris trace their ancestry to Larkana in Sind, from where their long march eastwards began over 400 years ago.

The root cause

Their wanderings led them to several places including Bagh where they settled near the mineral rich waters of River Baghini, its flowing waters vital to the printing process. Catering to the textile needs of the region’s tribal populace of Bhil and Bhilals, the Khatris printed and dyed the lugada or saris, ghagra or full-length gathered skirts, angocha or shoulder cloth, and odhni or head mantles. This customary wear was worn for occasions like weddings and celebrations and bought by tribal communities either with cash or bartered with forest produce during the lunar month of Karthik, around Diwali, and during Phagun, the harvest period around the festival of Holi.

With changing times and the availability of cheap mill-made textiles, the ties between the block-printer and their traditional tribal patrons diminished and the Khatris of Bagh started exploring new avenues to remain relevant to times. The patriarch of Bagh printers, the late Hajji Ishmael Khatri, awarded by the President of India with the honorific of Shilpguru, was instrumental in placing Bagh on the handblock print map. In the late 1980s, he collected disused blocks from other printers, made new blocks from old and damaged ones, researched and singlehandedly collated and built up the Bagh motif directory.

This design repertoire, rooted in tribal culture, extended from floral butis and vines to a vast range of jaal or trelliswork and geometric patterns, all startlingly contemporary in look. Ishmael experimented with layouts and colours, created variations in shades and established Bagh as a block printing centre to be reckoned with.

The printers in Bagh follow the mordant dye printing technique to create their striking deep red and iron black handblock printed textiles. This complex manual process requires patience, skill and dexterity. For instance, printing of a sari takes a minimum of three weeks.

The block itself is the very core of the process, and the quality of the print depends on the skill of the block-maker. Intricately carved by specialist block-makers in Pethapur, Gujarat in teak wood, block-makers follow the exact specification of the printers. Even before the printer starts the process of stamping the first block, several steps have to be completed to ready the fabric to accept the print and the colour.

The cloth, either cotton or silk, is first washed to remove all impurities and then soaked overnight in a mixture of arandi-ka-tel or unrefined castor oil, alkaline mineral salts and goat dung. When this mixture is completely fused into the fabric, it is then treated with harda or myrobalam nut powder. These processes soften the fabric, making it receptive to the dye and ready for printing.

A tedious process

The printer lays the cloth onto a low table, dips the block, usually 6x6 inches in size, into the colour tray ensuring that no extra colour adheres to the block. He then carefully places the corner of the block on to the fabric, setting its position before lowering the whole block down. With a firm, sure hand he thumps the block with his fist, thus ensuring an even print. This process is then repeated till the whole fabric is printed. Each print aligned and flush with the next. With experience, a block printer can average about 10 metres in a day.

The deep black colour is extracted from rusted iron fermented with molasses, or as is more common now, from iron ferrous sulphate or hara kasish. Shades of red emerge when the patterns are printed with mordant alum and are dyed in synthesised alizarin red dye bath. Boiled in huge copper vats set on wood fired furnaces, the yellow dhavda or Axle wood tree flowers are added in to brighten the colour. The fabrics are constantly shifted and turned in the vats with long wooden sticks as the mixture boils for over four hours, deepening the colour.

The alum print ensures that when the fabric is dyed, only the alum printed areas retain the red colour as it holds fast the dye, like a glue, to the areas it has been handblocked on.
The fabric is then washed in River Baghini, rich in copper and other minerals. It is from its waters that the dramatic blood-red and iron-black motifs associated with the Bagh handblock printed textiles emerge.