We are delighted to announce that we have added a new collection of block-printed cotton to our range. We’ve called it the Bagh collection. Bagh is the name of the town in the state of Madhya Pradesh where these beautiful textiles come from. Bagh in turn is named after the tigers which roam its outskirts. Traditional Bagh prints come in just three colours:  red, black and white. The motifs and designs are inspired by the paintings and stone carvings found at the man-made Buddhist caves outside of Bagh which were built during the 5th and 6th centuries AD.

The process of block-printing in Bagh is not all that different from the Ajrak process which you can read all about here. The printers in Bagh are also members of the Khatri community. There are, however, some small yet significant differences which we will point out in our description of the Bagh block-printing process.

The traditional Bagh prints make use of two natural dyes; black made from iron rust and red in the form of alizarin. The natural black dye is made by soaking scrap iron in water and jaggery. They don’t use any old scrap iron though as is the case in other places we have visited. In Bagh they use only old horseshoes because according to them the quality of iron used to make horseshoes is superior and as a result produces a purer and darker black dye. We can definitely attest that the Bagh ‘horseshoe’ black is one of the best natural black dyes we have seen. 

As a first step the cotton cloth is thoroughly washed and then soaked in myrobalan which acts as a mordant for natural dyes. Without a mordant the natural dyes won’t adhere to the cloth. Next up the printing begins. The cloth is cut into 10 metre lengths but, unlike in Ajrakhpur, they don’t pin the whole piece of cloth onto a workbench. Instead, the printer sits on the ground with a small table in front of them. The table is around 50 inches wide, wide enough for a 44-inch piece of cloth, and about 20 inches deep. After printing a few rows from left to right they place a piece of cloth on top of the fresh print and roll it up. They then pull the roll of printed cloth towards them and start printing the next rows. 



The ‘horseshoe’ black dye is printed directly onto the cotton. The alizarin red on the other hand cannot be printed directly onto cotton. For the red a separate mordant is used and in a subsequent step the cloth is boiled in alizarin which interacts with the printed mordant turning it a dark red. The mordant they use is alum which is colourless, so they add a pink dye to the alum. This then enables them to see where they’ve printed and help them align the printing block. After they’ve completed the printing of the mordant they store the cloth for roughly ten days in the workshop.  This ensures that the final colours of the finished product will be dark and vibrant. The alizarin is prepared in a large copper pot, placed in a furnace and heated with a wood fire. Once the cloth has been boiled in the alizarin and the mordant has turned a beautiful red, it’s time to wash the cloth to remove any residual mordant and dye. In a last additional step, which is different to the Ajrak process, they dip the cloth in a bucket with bleach. This removes any stains and turns the undyed surface a bright white.

What really caught our eye in Bagh is the blocks they use. They acquire them from a number of locations in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Some of their designs and motifs are extremely intricate and beautifully carved: Some of the best craftsmanship we have witnessed. Another interesting aspect to their blocks is the use of wool. The blocks they use to print the background as opposed to the motif are hollowed out and tightly packed with felted wool. As you can see in these pictures:



The reason they do this is to ensure that the mordant (or black dye) is printed evenly and uniformly…



If the prints don’t perfectly align and there are gaps, as you can see in the image above, they use a little pen to fill in…



And the final product looks something like (different design) this...