SANGANERI PRINTS
An in-depth study of the craft by the master himself, Mr. Rajkumar Pandayji. He is a world known artisan who has carried on his family name and legacy of hand block printing since a very young age. He has been honoured to represent India and present the beauty of sanganer and it's prints throughout the world.
This project is a result of a four day in-person interaction with him where he told us almost everything he could about the craft there was to know.
The process of how to develop the print:
A critical component of block printing is block carving and it is an art form in itself. Two kinds of blocks-wood and metal are made in unique ways and have unique purposes. The traditional printing process began with a rigorous scouring and bleaching procedure called Teluni, to emulsify the oils on the cotton threads.
The cloth was treated with Harda, which functions as a pre-mordant link between the fibers and the various other ingredients. It left a yellowish tinge to the fabric, hence known as ‘pila-karna‘. The craftsman then printed the black area of the design using the Syahi (ink) pinting paste prepared using scrap iron, horseshoes and Gur (jaggery) in an earthenware vessel. After the black outline was made, the craftsman made the Begar, a mordant used for red. Alum was mixed with sticky tree gum paste and a pinch of Geru red ochre to bring out colour in the otherwise transparent paste. The begar paste was then applied using a ‘Datta’ block to fill in the ‘Rekh’ (the outlining block) and the fabric was dried for a week.
The fabric had to be thoroughly washed in order to remove the tree gum and then the fabric was dyed.
The printer washed the dyed fabric in the running river water and allowed to dry in the scorching sun with sprinkling of water time to time. This resulted in a bright white background and clear richly coloured butis and butahs.
