CRAFT
Fabric traditions
MITA KAPUR
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The Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing has been vital in the revival and conservation of hand block printing.
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"It is a dynamic living museum, not just a static one with pretty pieces on display. We wanted our visitors to know and learn the intricacies of the skill and how intrinsic it is to the craftsmen.,"
Folds of tradition and history: Exhibits at the Anokhi Museum.
THE lights are muted. The colours must not fade. Every label is in English and Hindi. To every piece there is a specific reference with an accession number. Humidifying silica gel absorbs humidity and releases it back. Extreme swings in weather conditions affect the fibre of the textile. Temperature has to be stable. Standards are international. It's a museum, which tells tales of people's lives, in folds of fabric, cast in dyes, shaped by tradition, stamped by blocks of wood.
The Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing, within the Chanwar Palkiwalon ki Haveli in the old city of Amer, showcases a collection of 160 pieces chosen from nearly 20,000 garments, fabric swatches and an equally dizzying number of wooden blocks. Hand block printing is intrinsic to Jaipur, Sanganer and Bagru. The museum is a virtual repository of information on all facets of hand block printing from its near-mythic origins in the region to its current success as contemporary textiles that clothe and touch us.
Eclectic presentation
It is an eclectic presentation of an indigenous craft — the inherent versatility of block printing, the history of its revival, continuity and movement into contemporary spaces. New design directions, enhanced skills, technical innovations, market driven initiatives are systematically on display here. Indigo is boiled with turmeric and nashphal (pomegranate) to give a vibrant green. The green fades back to a blue. That's the magic of natural dyes. Many of the Jaipur prints like the chinwara, kachnar, channi, tikri are not used anymore. Some rural areas still adhere to ancient social mores and beliefs. Men have different colours and ways of tying turbans. Each motif was traditionally specific to a gender, community or caste. A babuliya has leaves of a babul tree, a maaliya ro fetya is a design worn exclusively by the Maali group. Only married women wear prints in bright yellows and reds. A rabari ro fetya print in indigo combined with the absence of a red border and yellow piping indicated widowhood.
Traditional prints have been adapted aesthetically to modern styles. The swinging 1970s with the Anokhi Handkerchief (Sanaganer rumal) dress, the Angocha cut turned into a dress, a traditional Attam Sukh (infinite pleasure) morphed into an opera coat for foreign markets show the vitality with which block printing can move in any kind of environment. Queen Sophia of Spain wore the fine Sanganer booti skirt and blouse. The ubiquitous gobhi (cauliflower) print on a high fashion coat in the 1970s was featured in Vogue much to the amusement of the locals. Pierre Cardin fell in love with hand block printed gypsy dresses and the rest is history.
Intriguing details
The walk through the sections of the Museum is smooth, like a plot that unravels mysteries gracefully, letting all the intriguing details seep in. Romani Jaitley, one of India's first professionally trained textile designers, worked on traditional prints to create the lotus print, Bhopali-cut kurtas swung into instant fame with a mélange of motifs from several cultures, taking the process of hand block printing to its first step in the lanes of fashion history. Prints from Farukkhabad are larger than prints from Sanganer.
Rain is elusive in Rajasthan. The famous leheriya (zigzag pattern of irregular colour stripes) is a visual invocation of the flow of water at the same time painstakingly showing the depths of indigo after multiple mud-resistant and dyeing processes. No small wonder that the blues in leheriya attract the eyes instinctively.
The whole process — how the fabric is dipped in natural dyes, given mud-resistant baths, the first and second washes, in indigo or alizarin to the last stage when the garment reaches the shop — is on display at the museum. The language of colours and the subtle nuances of this time-honed process are made simple. The complexities of labour are revealed, showing you how the craft is developed from point A to point B.
Gallery after gallery explain in simple detail the various processes that go into creating different kind of hand block printed textiles from natural and mineral dyes to pigment and chemical dyeing, from wood block printing to the crisp clarity of brass block printing. Combination processes of screen and hand block printing open our eyes to endless possibilities of one small block and human ingenuity can achieve.
Gift of the past
Khadi printing, in gold and silver, is probably Persian in origin. It was developed to simulate the look of rich brocade and embroidery. White on white khadi, on cool cotton is a soothing sight for hot summers in these parts. The whole process of khadi printing is like capturing a cloud of gold dust on a wet sky.
The ground floor is dedicated to the gift of the past and shows our inherited print traditions where as the top two floors are dedicated to contemporary print revival techniques on myriad surfaces with a demonstration area where visitors can print fabrics and learn the painstaking labour that goes into the making of hand block printed textiles.
"It is a dynamic living museum, not just a static one with pretty pieces on display. We wanted our visitors to know and learn the intricacies of the skill and how intrinsic it is to the craftsmen," said Pramod Kumar, who spent two and a half years setting up the museum. The conservation and storage tips came from across three continents from some of the finest museums in the world like The Textile Museum (Washington) the Victorian Albert Museum U.K., and the National Gallery, Australia.
Old world charm
Block printing was at its lowest ebb in the 1960s with very little innovation in the production process or in the range of products. Commercial viability needed to be combined with the old charm of traditional buta, bootis and bel, to capture a market inundated by mill-made fabrics and prints. The museum reveals the period of regeneration of this craft post-Independence.
Traditional techniques fused with modern know-how and the export boom has sustained its continuance. Anokhi's contribution in the last 38 years for revival and conservation has been laudable.
We were guided to the top floor of the museum, where we could try our hand at placing the block after dipping it in natural dye. Curled moustaches and a sun-beaten skin crinkled into a warm smile, gently guiding our hands to press the block down on the fabric. Devotion and veneration infused in every gentle yet firm move. A design unfolded before the eyes, its colours had dreams dancing.
The 400-year-old Haveli in the oldest part of Amer was originally owned by the flywhisk (Chanwar) attendants of the Kachawaah Maharajas of Amer and Jaipur, its high ceilings, narrow stone steps, naturally historical ambience, only add to the romance of carved blocks, hands stained in dyes, bright hues and soft folds of cotton.
Attam Sukh is what we left with, travelling back through lanes of Amer. It's strange but one left turn into a by-lane, can take you back into centuries of history.
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