Sanganer & Bagru, Rajasthan

The Jaipur Edit

Hand-block printing in madder root, indigo, turmeric and iron black. Carved teak blocks, natural dye, and cloth that keeps changing for the first few washes because that is what real dye does.

Tell us where to write, and we will write once — when it opens.

What is coming

Printed by hand, one block at a time

A block printer works with a carved teak block, a tray of dye, and a table. The block is pressed into the dye, positioned on the cloth by eye, and struck once with the heel of the hand. Then again, and again, across the length of the fabric — each impression registered against the last without a guide.

A single design may need four or five blocks, one per colour, each cut separately and each laid down in sequence. Get the registration wrong by two millimetres and the outline no longer meets the fill.

The dyes are the other half of it. Madder root for red, indigo for blue, turmeric for yellow, fermented iron for black. They behave unpredictably with water, weather and time, which is the reason synthetic dye replaced them nearly everywhere and the reason these pieces look the way they do.

— Arriving with Ram Singh, third-generation printer

The Dyes

Four colours, no synthetics

The whole Jaipur palette comes from four natural sources. Open a card to see how each is made.

IndigoNeel. The only traditional blue, and the strangest to work with.

Indigo is not water-soluble, so it cannot simply be dissolved and applied. The cloth is dipped into a fermented vat, comes out yellow-green, and turns blue in front of you as it oxidises in the air. Depth is built by repeated dipping — ten dips for a dark ground, each one followed by a wait.

Difficulty
Vat fermented
MadderManjistha root. Red, through a mordant rather than directly.

Madder does not dye cloth on its own. The fabric is first treated with a mordant — traditionally alum — which binds the dye to the fibre. Change the mordant and the same root gives everything from soft coral to deep brick.

Difficulty
Mordant dyed
TurmericHaldi. The easiest yellow, and the least permanent.

Turmeric gives a strong yellow immediately and fades honestly with sunlight over years. Traditionally combined with indigo for greens. We will tell you which pieces use it, because it changes how they should be stored.

Difficulty
Direct dye
Iron blackKasees. Scrap iron, fermented with jaggery, over weeks.

Rusted iron is left to ferment with jaggery and water until it yields a liquor that reacts with tannin in the cloth to produce black. It is the oldest black in the region and it is made, not bought.

Difficulty
Fermented

Meanwhile

Something you can buy today

The Lucknow Edit

Chikankari

Open now. Shadow work in white on white, from the city that has been doing it for three hundred years.

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