What a hand block print is
In Bagru you hear the craft before you see it: a soft, steady thump as a printer brings his fist down on a wooden block, lifts it and moves it a hand's width along the cloth.
The block: a design is carved in relief into a block of seasoned hardwood. A simple outline block may take a day, a detailed one a week or more.
Several blocks: a floral motif may need three: the rekh for the outline, the gadh for the background and the datta for the detail.
Facts to know
- Blocks
- Hand-carved, usually sheesham or teak
- Per design
- Often three or more blocks
- Printers
- The Chhipa community, in Bagru and Sanganer
- Bagru from Jaipur
- About 30 km, on the Ajmer road
- Season
- October to March, when cloth dries fast
- Registration by eye: each block must line up exactly with the last. A good printer does it by eye, using tiny marks on the block.
- Many stages: the cloth is washed, treated, printed, dyed, washed again and dried in the sun, over many days. The printing is only one part.
- The printers: most belong to the Chhipa community, whose name comes from the work itself. Our block printing in Bagru page tells their story.
- Why it costs more: every metre has passed through many hands. A metre of real hand printing cannot be sold for the price of a mill print.
The styles, and where each comes from
Every printing town has its own colours and its own hand. Learn four of them and you can read almost any cloth in a Jaipur bazaar.
Sanganer, the fine florals
- The look: delicate flowers and small sprigs on a bright white ground, often in many colours.
- Where: close to Jaipur, near the airport. Much printing now happens in larger workshops, but families still print by hand. Sanganer also makes handmade paper.
Bagru, the earthy prints
- The look: a cream ground from harda, the myrobalan fruit, with iron-black syahi, alum-and-madder red begar and indigo.
- Dabu: a mud resist stamped onto the cloth before dyeing in indigo, leaving pale patterns with a fine crackle.
Akola, the dabu of Mewar
- The look: deep indigo and heavy, bold dabu patterns, printed in the villages around Akola near Chittorgarh.
- Why seek it out: less visited than Bagru, and it fits a journey between Udaipur and Bundi.
Local tip
Buy one piece of each style on your first trip. Laid side by side at home, they will teach you more than any book.
How to tell a hand print from a copy
A real block print is never perfect. Its small mistakes are the proof that a person made it. A copy is perfect, and that is how you catch it.
The joins: look along the cloth for faint lines or small overlaps where one impression of the block meets the next. A screen print has none.
The registration: in a hand print, the fill colour sometimes drifts a hair's breadth off the outline. In a copy, it never does.
Facts to know
- Joins
- Faint lines where impressions meet
- Registration
- Tiny shifts between outline and fill
- Back
- Colour usually soaks through on cotton
- Repeat
- Slight variation from one motif to the next
- Dabu
- A fine crackle in the pale areas
- The repeat: a machine print is identical along the whole length. A hand print varies slightly in pressure and depth of colour.
- The back: turn it over. On hand-printed cotton the colour usually soaks through. Screen and digital prints often sit on the surface.
- The smell: natural dyes and syahi smell earthy when new. Chemical dyes smell sharper.
- The edge: many hand-printed lengths have an unprinted selvedge with small test impressions or smudges. Copies are often printed edge to edge.
- The price: if a quilt costs less than a dinner, it is not what the label says.
Labels, words and what they really mean
The bazaar has a vocabulary designed to sound reassuring. A few words are worth understanding precisely.
Hand block printed: printed by hand with wooden blocks. What you want.
Hand printed: often means hand block, but can mean a hand-pulled screen print. Ask which.
- Block print design or block print style: usually a screen or digital copy of a block print. Not the real thing.
- Natural dye or vegetable dye: ask which colours. Many printers mix natural dyes with safe synthetic ones, and that is honest if stated.
- Pure cotton: feel it, and look at the weave. Some cheap prints are on cotton blends.
- GI tags: Sanganer and Bagru hand block printing are protected by Geographical Indication registrations. Some makers label their work accordingly.
- Our rule: ask the shopkeeper, then check with your own eyes. An honest shop is happy to explain.
The colours, and what they are made of
In a Bagru dye house, every colour has a smell. The iron black is the one you won't forget.
Harda, the cream ground: ground myrobalan fruit, rich in tannin. It turns cloth a pale golden cream and helps the black and red bind to the fibre.
Syahi, the black: scrap iron fermented with jaggery and water for days. On harda-treated cloth it prints a deep black.
- Begar, the red: made with alum, which only becomes a true red when the cloth is later boiled with madder or a similar dye.
- Indigo, the blue: the cloth goes into the vat and comes out green, turning blue in the air as the dye oxidises. Several dips make it deeper.
- Other natural colours: printers also use plant dyes such as pomegranate rind and turmeric for yellows, though these vary from family to family.
- Synthetic colours: bright pinks, greens and turquoise usually come from modern dyes. Safe ones are widely used and perfectly honest if declared.
- How to ask: which colours here are natural? A printer who knows will tell you colour by colour.
Local tip
If you love indigo, buy dabu. It is the one style where the natural blue is almost always the real thing, because the mud resist needs the indigo vat.
The blocks, and the carvers behind them
Every printer depends on someone they rarely mention: the man with a chisel who spent a week cutting the block before a drop of dye was used.
A separate craft: block carving is often practised by separate families, working with fine chisels and a small hammer on planed hardwood.
Air holes: larger blocks are drilled with small holes to let trapped air escape, so the colour prints evenly.
- Where they are carved: some in Jaipur and Bagru, and some of the finest across the border in Gujarat, where the town of Pethapur has a long carving tradition.
- Old blocks: treasured, passed down in families and sometimes retired to hang on a wall once too worn to print.
- Buying a block: old and new blocks are sold in Jaipur as objects in their own right. Ask whether a block was used for printing or carved for sale.
- Your own design: some guests commission a block of a monogram or family motif, then have it printed onto table linen. Tell us early, as carving takes time.
What most visitors miss
Most visitors buy a printed scarf and leave. A little more attention turns a souvenir into an education.
The selvedge: the edge of a hand-printed length often carries test impressions and smudges. They show you how the printer warmed up the block.
The washing: a hand-printed piece fresh from the workshop may feel stiff. It softens after a few washes, so don't judge the hand by a new cloth.
Before you go
- Wear
- Clothes you don't mind staining
- Bring
- Bed and table measurements
- Allow
- A morning in Bagru, an afternoon to buy
- Ask
- Hand block or screen, and which dyes
- The drying fields: in winter, the ground around Bagru is striped with long lengths of cotton. It is one of the loveliest sights in rural Rajasthan.
- The community meanings: some colours and motifs were once worn by particular communities, by married women or for mourning. Ask a printer about the patterns of his own village.
- The leftover lengths: many printing families sell short ends and seconds with small faults at fair prices. Perfect for cushions.
- The other textiles: tie-dye is a different craft entirely. Our leheriya and bandhani page explains how to buy it.
Who will love it
We have taken fashion designers, retired engineers and eight-year-olds to the printers. They all left with blue fingers and a bag of cloth.
Designers and makers: spend a full day, or several, learning one stage in depth. We can arrange longer sessions with a printer or a block carver.
Interior lovers: order bed linen, curtains or upholstery lengths, with honest lead times and tracked shipping.
- Families: printing a cushion cover is hands-on, messy and fun, and children are often less self-conscious than adults about a crooked print.
- Photographers: the indigo vats, the drying fields and the printers' hands. Ask before photographing anyone, especially women in the dye house.
- Travellers short of time: the Anokhi Museum in Amer and an hour in a good shop give you the best of the craft without the drive.
- On a longer trip: our textile and craft trail follows printing, dyeing and weaving across Rajasthan.
What to buy
Block-printed cotton is the most useful souvenir in Rajasthan. You will use it every day for years, and it gets softer every time you wash it.
Cloth by the metre
- Why: for curtains, cushions or clothes made at home, or by a Jaipur tailor in a day or two.
- Tip: buy a little more than you need. Dye lots and blocks vary, and the same print may not be there next year.
Razai quilts and dohars
- Razai: the famously light Jaipuri quilt, filled with fine cotton and covered in block-printed cloth. Rolls up small.
- Dohar: a thinner, layered cotton blanket, perfect for summer nights or as a bedcover.
Bedcovers and table linen
- Why: large, flat and easy to pack, and you see the full sweep of the design.
- Tip: measure your bed and table before you fly. Indian bed sizes differ from European and American ones.
Clothes and scarves
- Why: kurtas, skirts, shirts and scarves in fine mulmul cotton are cool, light and lovely to wear in Rajasthan itself.
- Tip: a Jaipur tailor can copy a favourite shirt in a block print you choose. Allow two or three days.
Something you printed yourself
- Why: a scarf or cushion cover printed with your own hand in Bagru, crooked lines and all, means more than anything you can buy.
- How: our Bagru morning ends with exactly that.
Where we shop for block prints
The best block prints in Rajasthan are bought either from the people who printed them or from shops that pay them fairly. Everything else is a gamble.
Facts to know
- From the maker
- Printing families in Bagru and Sanganer
- To learn first
- Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing, Amer
- Long-established brand
- Anokhi, founded in Jaipur in 1970
- Fixed prices
- Rajasthali, the state emporium on MI Road
- The bazaars
- Bapu Bazaar and Nehru Bazaar
From the printing families
- Where: Bagru and Sanganer, with families we have known for years. You see the work and buy directly.
- Why: the money reaches the people who made the cloth. We pay the family for its time whether or not you buy.
The Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing
- Where: in a restored haveli in old Amer, a few minutes' walk from the fort.
- Why: the best introduction to the craft we know, with a printer or carver often at work. See it before you buy anything.
Anokhi
- What it is: a long-established Jaipur brand of hand block-printed clothes and textiles, founded in 1970, which supports the museum.
- Why: reliable quality, fixed prices and real hand printing.
Rajasthali, MI Road
- What it is: the government crafts emporium, with fixed prices.
- Why: browse here first to learn fair prices before you shop in the bazaars.
Bapu Bazaar and Nehru Bazaar
- Where: just inside the southern wall of the walled city, near Sanganeri Gate.
- Why: block-printed cotton by the metre, quilts and clothes. Quality ranges from superb to screen-printed. After Bagru, you will tell the difference. See the bazaars of Jaipur.
Prices, bargaining and fair dealing
Our grandmother's rule was never to bargain for anything you don't want to buy. Her second rule was never to bargain hard with the person who made it.
Learn the range first: fixed-price shops tell you what fair looks like before you walk into a bazaar.
In the bazaar: bargaining is normal in most shops, fixed in some. A smile and a willingness to walk away usually find the right number.
- With the maker: don't bargain hard over a scarf or a cushion cover. A small sum matters far more to a printing family than to you.
- Big orders: for bed linen or lengths for upholstery, the family will quote a fair price, and we can arrange tracked shipping.
- The commission trap: some drivers and guides earn a share of what you spend in certain showrooms. That raises the price and pushes factory cloth as hand work.
- Our way: our guides are paid never to take commissions, and we take no share of anything our guests buy. Read travelling responsibly.
Local tip
Ask the price per metre, then the price for the length you want. Some shops quote by the piece, and the comparison saves a lot of confusion.
Fabrics, and how they feel
The same block printed on two different cloths can look like two different crafts. Feel before you choose.
Mulmul: a very fine, soft, loosely woven cotton. Lovely for scarves, kurtas and summer clothes. It creases, and that is part of its charm.
Cambric and poplin: smoother, tighter cottons for shirts and dresses.
- Voile: sheer and light, for curtains and scarves.
- Heavier cotton and canvas: for cushions, bags and upholstery. Prints look bolder on a heavy weave.
- Linen and silk: some printers work on linen and silk too. Ask how the dye behaves on each.
- Kota doria: the fine checked cotton-silk of Kota, sometimes block-printed. Our journal on Kota doria weaving explains the weave.
Washing and caring for block prints
A well-loved Bagru quilt can last for decades. Indigo and iron black soften beautifully with age, if you are kind to them.
Cold water: wash by hand or on a gentle cycle in cold water, with a mild detergent.
Separately at first: wash new pieces separately for the first few washes. Some colour will run, especially indigo.
- Dry in shade: strong sun fades natural dyes. Dry in the shade, inside out if you can.
- No bleach: never. It strips the colour and weakens the cotton.
- Iron warm: on the back, while slightly damp, for crisp mulmul.
- Quilts: air razais in the sun only briefly, and have them dry-cleaned or washed gently. Shake them out rather than wringing.
A block-print day, the way we plan it
One morning learning, one afternoon buying. That is the order in which our family introduces anyone to block printing.
Morning, Bagru
- Leave early: before the traffic on the Ajmer road. Watch the harda bath, the indigo vat and the printing, and print a piece yourself.
- Walk the drying fields: where long lengths of cloth lie in the sun.
Midday, lunch and Sanganer
- Lunch: back towards the city.
- Sanganer: in the afternoon, compare the fine florals with what you saw in Bagru. Seeing both in a day is the best way to learn.
Late afternoon, the bazaars
- Now buy: Bapu and Nehru bazaars or the shops we trust, with your eye trained by the morning.
- Then rest: at Samode Haveli inside the walled city, or Rambagh Palace. Our Jaipur itinerary fits it all in.