AJRAK PRINTING: A TESTIMONY TO ANCIENT INDIAN ARTS AND CRAFTS TRADITIONS

Fashion design, retail,textile, tye n dye

Textile traditions in India date back to the Indus Valley civilization. Indian textiles were traded in the Arab kingdoms, Egypt and East Africa. Textiles are deeply tangled with the identity of Gujarat and its people. They reveal the innate aesthetics of artisans and their associations with the natural environment. Using a combination of dying, weaving and printing, the craftsmen in Gujarat come up with the amazing materials. Block printing is a very old textile craft of Gujarat. The craftsmen are specialized in using wooden blocks to handprint complicated patterns on the yardage. One such block printing craft is Ajrakh. This printing skill came to Gujarat from Sindh. Dhamadka village in Kutch is the chief centre for this fine art of resists printing and mordant dyeing. It is one of the oldest types of block printing on textiles still practised in parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan in India, and in Sindh in Pakistan. Textiles printed in this manner are hand -printed using natural dyes on both sides by a lengthy and time-consuming process of resist printing.

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