It’s a nice sunny morning for a drive and we decided to visit a women's Self Help Group (SHG), supported by the “Belaku Trust”. We head out south, some 100kms from Bangalore and park in front of a quaint village house. But we know its not just an ordinary house - by the rows and rows of“block-printed” cloth hanging on the clothesline on the portico. We enter in to be greeted by more colourful strips of clothes hanging almost everywhere inside the house. We manage to find our way through the clothmaze to the women’s work desk. The house is the workplace for a woman SHG who are trained in the art of block printing and earn their livelihood from it.
The block printing method, though laborious, is actually quite straightforward but calls for extreme precision. The fabric to be printed is first washed to free it of starch. The dried fabric is then stretched over the printing table and secured with pins. Color is mixed separatelyand kept ready. So are the blocks. The blocks are made of teak wood and hand-carved. When printing begins, the color is first evened out in the tray. Then the block is dipped in the outline color. The block is pressed down hard on the fabric, to make a clear impression. Thereafter, other blocks are used to fill in color. Once the fabric is printed, it is dried in the sun. It is then rolled in newspaper to prevent the fabric layers from sticking to each other. The fabric is then steamed. Thereafter, it is washed in water and dried in the sun and ironed. The history of block printing in India dates back to the 12th century and a lot of royal patronage has been given to the art through the centuries. Today the prominent centres of block printing are in Gujarat and Rajasthan.
The women inside the house were meticulously banging the wooden blocks on to the cloth for the design to pass on from the wooden block to the cloth. They were working at a break neck speed to complete an urgent order. Hands were hurting but they had big smiles on their faces. As one of the women put it, the money from the big order will allow her to buy some much needed school supplies for her daughter. I have many block printed clothes – tops, stoles etc.. but had never given a thought to the amount of hard work that goes into making a block printed cloth. Now whenever I see any block printed material I truly appreciate the efforts that have gone into making it!!
At masmara, we use block printed handmade paper for gift wrapping our products.
