Jetpur Textile Dyeing & Printing
Screen and block printing on a river town's drying fields, cloth to the horizon.
Jetpur, on the Bhadar river in Rajkot district of Gujarat, is a large textile printing and dyeing centre, producing printed cotton sarees, dupattas, dress and furnishing fabric, and a big volume of printed cloth for export, historically to Africa and the Middle East. Both hand screen printing and block printing are used, alongside dyeing and finishing, and the town's riverbanks and fields are famous for the sheets of printed cloth laid out to dry.
Craft at a Glance
Origin
Jetpur, Gujarat
Also Known As
Jetpur prints, Saurashtra screen printing, Jetpur saree printing
Craft Type
Screen- and block-printed and dyed textiles
Practising Community
Khatri and Chhipa printer-dyer families and a large screen-printing workforce
Materials
Mill cotton and blended cloth; nylon and metal screens or carved wooden blocks; and reactive, pigment and vat dyes with thickeners and fixers.
Known For
Printed cotton sarees and dress fabric, and large volumes of wax-style print cloth for African and Gulf markets
Where It's Made
Jetpur town on the Bhadar river, Rajkot district, Gujarat
Time to Create
Three to seven days per length
GI Status
Not GI-registered
Process Steps
Preparing the cloth
Grey cloth is scoured, bleached and dried so the print pastes strike evenly.
Making the screens
A separate mesh screen is prepared for each colour of the design, with the non-printing areas blocked out.
Fixing the cloth to the table
The cloth is laid smooth on a long padded printing table, sometimes gummed down so it cannot shift.
Screen or block printing
Each colour is applied in turn — squeegeed through its screen, or stamped with carved blocks for traditional designs.
Drying between colours
The cloth is dried between passes so colours do not bleed into one another.
Fixing
Printed cloth is steamed or heat-cured to bond the dye or pigment to the fibre.
Washing and field-drying
The cloth is washed in the river to clear loose colour and spread out on banks and fields to dry in the sun.
Technique Glossary
Screen printing
Forcing print paste through the open areas of a fine mesh screen, one screen per colour.
Discharge printing
Printing a chemical that removes colour from an already-dyed ground to make a pattern.
Squeegee
The rubber blade drawn across a screen to push paste through onto the cloth.
Wax-style print
A printed imitation of West African wax-resist cloth, a major Jetpur export line.
Reactive dye
A dye that forms a chemical bond with cotton, giving bright, wash-fast colour.
Curing
Heating printed cloth so the dye or pigment sets permanently into the fibre.
Grey cloth
Woven fabric before bleaching, dyeing, printing or finishing.
A Craft Through Time
Pre-modern
Kathiawar dyeing
Dyeing and printing are established crafts in the Saurashtra towns.
Mid-20th century
Screen-print boom
Jetpur scales up with hand screen printing, aided by the Bhadar's water supply.
Late 20th century
Export cloth
The town prints large volumes of cotton for African and Middle Eastern markets.
21st century
Effluent and competition
Water-pollution controls and competition from other printing centres reshape the industry.
Present
A printing hub
Jetpur remains a major printing and dyeing centre serving both export and domestic saree markets.
Did You Know?
For decades a large share of the brightly printed cotton wrappers worn in parts of East and West Africa was printed in Jetpur, then shipped out through Gujarat's ports.
Every craft has a story. Every story begins with tradition.