Kalamkari

Kalamkari is cloth painted or block printed with natural dyes, from kalam, a pen, and kari, work. Two quite different traditions carry the name: Srikalahasti, where the whole design is drawn freehand with a bamboo pen and the subjects are temple narratives made as hangings for shrines, and Machilipatnam, where the work is block printed and the tradition came through Persian and later European trade. The dyes are mineral and vegetable and the cloth goes through many washes, so a finished piece has taken weeks.

The cloth is treated with myrobalan and buffalo milk, which stops the dye spreading and fixes it. The pen is a pointed bamboo with a ball of cloth bound behind the tip as a reservoir, squeezed to release the dye. Black comes from iron filings fermented with jaggery, red from alum as a mordant with madder, yellow from myrobalan or pomegranate, blue from indigo. The cloth is boiled, washed in running water and sun bleached between stages, and the number of washes is why the colours are what they are. A Srikalahasti temple hanging may take a month or more.

Learnt in the workshop from childhood in the Srikalahasti families, beginning with filling in areas already outlined by an older hand, then borders, then faces and finally the composition. Dye preparation is learnt alongside and is half the craft. Five to ten years makes an independent artisan. The National Institute of Fashion Technology and state craft institutes now run short courses that produce designers rather than artisans, and the distinction is made firmly by the workshops.

The Srikalahasti work is temple work, tied to the Andhra temples and to the chitrakathi narrative tradition, and has a Geographical Indication. Machilipatnam was a port and its printed kalamkari was made for export to Persia and later to Europe, which shaped its motifs towards floral and arabesque patterns. The two are often sold interchangeably and are not the same craft. Chemical dyes and screen printing have taken most of the market, and the GI protects the name without much protecting the method, which practitioners say plainly.

Andhra and Telangana

Srikalahasti for the pen drawn temple hangings and Machilipatnam for the block printed export cloth, both with Geographical Indications.

Tamil Nadu

The temple hangings were made for Tamil temples too, and Sickinaickenpet keeps a related painted cloth tradition.

Odisha

Pattachitra is the neighbouring painted cloth tradition with a different technique and a temple function of its own.

Deities

• Krishna
• Rama
• Vishnu
• Durga

Festivals

• Navaratri begins
• Jagannath Rath Yatra

Related arts

• Pattachitra
• Tanjore painting