BLOCK PRINTING

An hour outside of Jaipur you will find villages dedicated to block printing, a craft that has been passed down through generations of families for hundreds of years.  Deepak shows us around the large workshop farm. His family is spread around with their individual roles – Sham, his older brother, is the master-dyer, Papaji, his father, is often found above the indigo pit with a long blue stick dying lengths of fabric, Deepak oversees it all.

BLOCK PRINTING - The process of translating a design from a hand-carved wooden printing block, onto your chosen cloth. 

Pigment printing uses acid-free inks to print the design from the block onto pre-dyed fabric. There is a wooden tray on wheels that each printer has prepared next to them, their dye pad. It is pushed round with them as to not interrupt the steady beat of the blocks hitting the tables. It is very quick and skilled work.

Dabu is a mud-resist process, literally using mud to print on to the fabric with. Once the mud has been baked in the sun it is ready to be dyed, the whole fabric submerged in the chosen colour. Dried in the hot Indian sun, the whole fabric is then washed to reveal the pattern. Steaming and washing sets the fabric.

The blocks are carved within the village, all designs are catered for. Please get in touch to discuss your ideas.