Kalamkari
Pen-drawn and block-printed cloth, coloured with plant dye and iron mordant.
Kalamkari — 'pen work' — is hand-drawn or block-printed cotton dyed entirely with plants and minerals. The Srikalahasti school is freehand, temple-oriented, and narrative; the Machilipatnam school is block-printed and Persian-influenced in its motifs. The process runs to seventeen or more steps, most of them washing.
What to look for
- Earth palette: madder red, indigo, myrobalan yellow, iron black
- Narrative panels from the epics, in registers
- Fine pen line rather than brush
- Cloth softened and washed many times
How it is made
Cotton treated with myrobalan and buffalo milk, drawn with a bamboo kalam, then repeatedly dyed, boiled and river-washed. Black comes from fermented iron; red is drawn out by mordant rather than painted on.
Before you buy
Genuine kalamkari smells faintly of the process and has slight irregularities. Perfectly uniform colour usually means screen printing with chemical dye.