Ajrakh Block Printing
Indigo, madder and a starry grid — printed on both faces so the cloth has no wrong side.
Ajrakh is a complex resist- and mordant-printed cloth made in Kutch, Gujarat, chiefly at the villages of Ajrakhpur and Dhamadka. Its deep blue, madder red, black and white patterns are built from geometric grids, eight-pointed stars, trefoils, cintamani dots and floral lattices drawn from Islamic ornament. Traditionally it was the everyday cloth of the Maldhari herding communities, worn as turbans, lungis and shoulder wraps and given at births, weddings and deaths. What sets it apart from most block prints is that it is printed on both faces of the cloth in exact register, so the design reads identically front and back and there is no wrong side. A full Ajrakh passes through sixteen to twenty separate printing, dyeing, washing and drying stages, all using plant and mineral colour.
Craft at a Glance
Origin
Bhuj, Gujarat
Also Known As
Ajrak, Ajrakhpur print, Sindhi ajrak
Craft Type
Resist and mordant block-printed textile
Practising Community
Khatri Muslim printer-dyer families, several tracing descent from Sindh
Materials
Handloom cotton, and increasingly silk and wool; carved teak blocks; and natural dyes and agents — indigo, madder root, alizarin, pomegranate rind, myrobalan (harde), lime, gum arabic, alum, dried limbdo (neem) and fermented scrap-iron liquor.
Known For
Double-sided natural-dye block printing in indigo blue and madder red
Where It's Made
Ajrakhpur and Dhamadka in Kutch, Gujarat; Barmer in Rajasthan; historically Sindh (now Pakistan)
Time to Create
Fourteen to twenty-one days across sixteen or more wet and dry stages
GI Status
Protected as Kutch Ajrakh, a registered GI of Gujarat
Process Steps
Washing and softening (saaj)
The greasy loom cotton is beaten clean in water and then steeped for a day or more in a mix of camel dung, soda ash and castor oil, which softens it and helps later dyes strike evenly.
Myrobalan steeping (kasanu)
The cloth is soaked in a solution of ground myrobalan nut; its tannin will bond with the metallic mordants printed later and turns the ground a pale straw colour.
Resist printing (khariyanu)
A paste of lime and gum is block-printed onto both faces of the cloth wherever the pattern is to stay white; the print is dusted with sawdust so it does not smudge.
Mordant printing (kat and kan)
A fermented-iron black and an alum-based red mordant are printed with separate blocks, again on both sides in register, marking where black and red will develop.
Indigo dyeing (nili)
The cloth is dipped repeatedly in an indigo vat; the resisted areas resist the blue while everything else deepens with each dip.
Madder boiling (rangvanu)
The cloth is boiled with madder or alizarin and a mordant helper; red appears only where the alum mordant was printed, and the iron areas turn a dense black.
Washing and sunning
Between every wet stage the cloth is beaten and rinsed clean in running water and spread flat in the sun, which brightens the colours and clears loose dye and paste.
Repeat resist and dye rounds
Further coats of resist and further dye baths are added to build the layered final pattern, the darkest colours always last.
Technique Glossary
Resist printing
Printing a paste that physically blocks dye, so the covered areas stay undyed when the cloth goes into the vat.
Mordant
A metallic salt, colourless itself, printed onto cloth so that a dye later bonds permanently only where it was applied.
Kharad / kasish
The fermented scrap-iron liquor that prints as black and also acts as a mordant.
Harde (myrobalan)
A tannin-rich nut used to pre-treat the cloth so mordants and dyes hold fast.
Khatri
The Muslim printer-dyer community of Kutch and Sindh who hold the Ajrakh tradition.
Rekh and datta
The outline block and the filling block; each motif is built from both, printed in register.
Double-sided printing
Printing the identical pattern on both faces of the cloth so it has no reverse — an Ajrakh hallmark.
Indigo vat
A fermented dye bath in which cloth turns from yellow-green to blue as it oxidises in the air after each dip.
Cintamani
A pattern of three dots and wavy lines, of Buddhist and Ottoman origin, common in Ajrakh borders.
A Craft Through Time
c. 2500 BCE
A pattern as old as the Indus
The 'Priest-King' bust from Mohenjo-daro wears a robe with a trefoil pattern very close to later Ajrakh motifs.
10th–15th century
Traded to Egypt
Block-printed cottons from western India with Ajrakh-type designs reach the Red Sea trade and survive in the rubbish mounds of Fustat, near Cairo.
16th–18th century
Khatris settle in Kutch
Printing families migrate from Sindh and are settled at Dhamadka under the Rao of Kutch, dyeing for herder communities.
20th century
Synthetic pressure
Cheap chemical dyes and printed mill cloth push many dyers toward shortcuts, and the fully natural process nearly disappears.
2001
Earthquake and Ajrakhpur
The Bhuj earthquake destroys Dhamadka's water supply; printers build a new village, Ajrakhpur, and rebuild the craft around it.
2010s
Global recognition
Master printers win national and international awards and Ajrakh becomes a touchstone for the worldwide natural-dye revival.
Present
GI-protected craft
Registered as Kutch Ajrakh, the cloth supplies designers and museums while still clothing local herder families.
Did You Know?
The name Ajrakh is often linked to the Sindhi 'aaj rakh' — 'keep it today' — from a story of a king so taken with the cloth that he would not take it off, though it may also derive from 'azrak', the Arabic for blue.
Every craft has a story. Every story begins with tradition.