Ahmedabad Textile & Block Printing
Ahmedabad, Gujarat
Ahmedabad and its surrounding villages form one of the oldest cotton-printing and textile-trading centres in the world. Craftsmen print yardage, dupattas, sarees, bed covers, quilts and garments using hand-carved wooden blocks, working in two broad families of technique: mordant styles, in which a printed metallic salt fixes a dye that develops in a later bath, and resist styles, in which a paste, wax or mud is printed to keep dye away from parts of the cloth. Designs range from tiny buti sprigs and geometric jaals to the sprawling flowering trees and paisley butas that European buyers once ordered by the shipload. The city's Calico Museum of Textiles, one of the finest textile collections anywhere, grew directly out of this trade.