Three villages.
One cloth.
The story of how a garment is made — from the carver's chisel to the printer's block to the cloth you wear.
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We didn't choose Jaipur for its Instagram aesthetic. We chose it because the craft is still alive there — in specific villages, in specific families, passed down without a manual.
Where the colour
begins.
Bagru is a small town 30km west of Jaipur, home to the Chippa community — hereditary textile printers who have practised hand block printing for over 400 years. They use iron-mud resist (dabu) and dyes chosen to be gentle on skin and breathable to wear, achieving colours that deepen with every wash rather than fade.
The printer knows the craft not from a textbook, but from watching his father, who watched his grandfather.
Where the block
meets cloth.
Near the ancient Amer Fort, block printing families work on long print tables — sometimes 30 metres long — aligning carved teak blocks by eye alone. There is no computer, no laser guide. The printer reads the cloth, positions the block, leans into it with their full body weight, and stamps.
No two prints are mathematically identical. The slight variations in pressure and alignment are what give hand block printed fabric its warmth — a rhythm that machine printing cannot replicate.
Where the pattern
is born.
Before a pattern can be printed, it must be carved. In Kukas, master craftsmen carve intricate motifs into seasoned teak — florals, paisleys, geometrics, jali patterns — using chisels that have been in their families for generations. A complex block can take three weeks to carve.
Each block will print thousands of metres before it is retired. When the wood wears down, the pattern is gone — there is no digital backup, no scan on file. That's why every season, we commission new blocks and archive the old ones.
From chisel to cloth — six steps.
Design
We sketch motifs inspired by Rajasthani architecture, garden geometry, and textile history. A design goes through multiple iterations before a block is commissioned.
Block Carving
Master carvers in Kukas translate the design into teak wood — chiselling every line by hand. Complex blocks take 2–3 weeks to complete.
Fabric Prep
Cotton 60×60 is washed, starched, and stretched on the print table. The fabric must be perfectly taut before printing begins.
Block Printing
The printer dips the block in colour paste, positions it on the cloth, and stamps with full body weight. Repeat — for metres and metres of fabric.
Dyeing & Fixing
Dyes are chosen to be gentle on skin and breathable to wear. The cloth is sun-dried, washed, and checked for colour fastness before moving to cutting.
Cutting & Finishing
Garments are cut to pattern and stitched by our tailoring unit. Each piece is quality-checked, tagged, and packed by hand before dispatch.
What we print on — and why it matters.
A block print is only as good as the cloth beneath it. We work with three fabrics — each chosen because it holds dye differently, drapes differently, and lives differently on the body.
Handwoven Cotton 60×60
The workhorse. 60-count cotton woven on pit looms — dense enough to hold a sharp print, light enough to breathe through a Jaipur summer. The weave is slightly uneven in the way all handwovens are: you can feel the warp and weft if you press your thumb to it. It softens with every wash without losing structure. A piece in this fabric, worn for three years, is different from a piece worn for one week — better.
Mul Cotton
The equivalent of a whisper. Mul is a loosely woven, sheer cotton — so fine it moves with a room's current. Printing on mul is harder than on dense cotton: the block has to be loaded with less paste or it bleeds. The result, when it works, is a print that looks like it was breathed onto the cloth rather than stamped. Mul pieces are for heat, for layering, for days when you want fabric to be barely there.
Chanderi Cotton
From the town of Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh — a fabric with 2,500 years of history behind it. It has a natural lustre from the interlocked cotton and silk-blend threads, and a characteristic semi-transparency. The same print takes on a different character depending on the base cloth — softer on mul, more jewel-toned on Chanderi. We use it for occasion pieces where we want the fabric itself to carry some of the weight.
What a machine cannot do.
A rotary screen printing machine can produce 60 metres of fabric per minute. It aligns the pattern to 0.01mm. Every repeat is mathematically identical. The colour saturation doesn't vary by even a fraction. It is, by every industrial metric, better than a person with a wooden block.
And yet.
When a block printer sets the block on cloth and leans into it — the pressure varies by half a kilogram depending on which way the grain of the teak is facing. The dye paste fills the carved lines and bleeds, by 0.2mm, into the weave. The next stamp shifts 1mm because the printer's wrist turned slightly. These are not errors. They are the evidence that a person made this — that there was a body on the other end of the process, making judgements, feeling the cloth, adjusting.
Machine printing produces objects. Hand block printing produces artefacts. The distinction matters if you believe that what you wear should hold some trace of the human who made it.
Machine Print
- 60m per minute
- 0.01mm alignment precision
- Every repeat identical
- No variation in pressure
- No maker's mark
- Scalable to millions
Hand Block Print
- 2–3m per hour
- 1–2mm natural variation
- No two pieces identical
- Pressure varies by grain
- Every stamp = a decision
- Made in hundreds, not millions
It gets better.
A hand block printed cotton garment is not finished when it leaves our studio. It finishes when you've worn it enough. Here is what happens over time — and how to let it happen properly.
The bloom
Block prints bloom on the first wash — excess surface dye releases, and the true colour emerges. Wash alone, in cold water, without detergent if possible. The water will run slightly coloured. This is normal. Do not panic.
The settling
The colour settles into the weave. The hand becomes softer. The fabric begins to move differently — looser, more pliable. Wash in cold water with a mild detergent. Dry in shade. Do not tumble dry. Do not bleach. Iron on reverse side only.
The personality
Indigo pieces begin to show their character — lightening where the fabric creases, deepening where it doesn't. The print may develop a slight softness at the edges of each stamp. This is the patina building. It is the proof of use, not a sign of wear.
The heirloom
A well-cared-for hand block printed cotton piece will outlast most things in your wardrobe. The fabric grows stronger as the fibres consolidate. The colour, fixed with natural mordants, holds. The pattern, pressed into the weave by a craftsperson's body weight, does not lift. What you have, eventually, is a record of time.
The four rules
Cold wash only. Never above 30°C.
Dry in shade. UV fades the print.
Iron on reverse, low heat. Never steam a block print directly.
No bleach. Ever. It dissolves the dye bond.
Words you'll see on our products.
Dabu
A resist paste made from clay, gum, and wheat chaff. Applied to cloth before dyeing, it blocks colour in precise areas — creating pattern through absence. After dyeing, the dabu is washed off to reveal the uncoloured cloth beneath. The technique is specific to Bagru.
Mordant
A binder that helps colour hold to cloth fibre. Without a mordant, dye can wash out much faster. It's as much a part of a lasting print as the colour itself.
Chippa
The hereditary community of block printers in Bagru and Sanganer. The word comes from "chhapna" — to print or stamp. Chippa families have been the custodians of this craft tradition for 400+ years. Their caste identity is inseparable from the craft — the knowledge passes father to son, generation to generation.
Khari
Gold or silver printing paste applied with a block. Used for accent printing on special-occasion garments. Khari blocks are usually smaller, used for borders and highlight motifs after the main colour print is complete and dry. A garment with khari involves at minimum two separate printing sessions.
Syahi
The black outline paste used in Bagru printing — made from fermented iron filings. "Syahi" literally means ink. It's applied first, before any colour. The syahi outline provides the structure that holds the entire print together. A Bagru print without syahi would look unfinished — the black is what gives it its characteristic solidity.
Placement Print
A technique where motifs are stamped at specific locations on the garment — hem border, yoke, cuff — rather than all over the fabric. The printer works on cut panels or even finished pieces, aligning each stamp by eye. It requires more skill than all-over printing because there is no repeating grid to hide errors in.
Begar
A pre-treatment paste applied to cotton cloth before printing, made from castor oil and soda ash. It opens the fibre slightly, allowing dye to penetrate more deeply. The cloth is treated, dried, and washed before the first print goes on. Without begar, colours on cotton would sit on the surface rather than bonding into the weave.
Resist Print
Any technique where a barrier (wax, clay, chemical) is applied to cloth before dyeing to prevent colour from reaching certain areas. Dabu is a resist. Batik is a resist. The logic is inverted from direct printing: instead of adding colour, you protect absence of colour. The result is pattern created by what the dye could not reach.
"
The block doesn't lie. If I press wrong, the print is wrong. There's no undo — only the next stamp.— Ramesh, Block Printer, Amer · 22 years of practice
