Ajrakh Modal Silk

Ajrakh is one of the oldest surviving block printing traditions in the world, carried for generations by the Khatri printers of Kutch who worked in Dhamadka and rebuilt their village as Ajrakhpur after the 2001 earthquake. A single Ajrakh passes through sixteen or more stages of washing, resist printing with lime and gum, and dyeing in madder root for red and fermented indigo for blue, with black drawn from iron and jaggery. The cloth is printed on both faces so the pattern reads the same either way. On modal, a fibre spun from beech pulp, the natural dyes take deeply and the saree falls with a fluid softness and a quiet sheen.

Woven in

Ajrakhpur, Bhuj, Kutch, Gujarat

Signature

Resist block printing in madder and indigo on soft modal, printed on both faces of the cloth