On my list of things to do while in India, was of course to try and do a a part of the textile trail. I did some on line research I found Shymila Rao, of Blocks and Prints who runs block printing workshops in Mumbai. I mailed her and we soon had a date for some lovely block printing to happen.
Part of the workshop was an intro into textiles forms of the Indus valley which followed the flow of the river. Dyers, weavers and textile artists lived along the banks as water was a vital part of the process of creating fabric. Each area had it's own tradition and in the past, each print could have easily been identified regionally. The Rajasthan area is now most known for the textile processes done there and the hot dry weather of the region is perfect for the natural dyeing process that has been typical for the area. I learned though that there were lots of regions producing very distinct looking fabric using specific techniques and natural dye combinations etc.. The pictures below has textile examples from the Bagh region and the Ajrak region as well. There are more out there, these were simply the two I picked to highlight. The most obvious difference was of course the colours and patterns used. One was floral and very easy on the eye, the other far more bold and obvious in colour and print style.
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| Bagh fabrics |
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| Ajrak fabrics |
Some of the places and processes that were discussed during the workshop sounded amazing! The pictures below are of work done with dyeing, block printing, over printing, resist printing using a natural mud resist and finally an indigo vat.
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