Block Printing Traditions of Bagru – A Tour of Block Print House

About an hours drive outside of the city of Jaipur in Bagru, I met Deepak Chhipa, who runs his family’s block printing business called Block Print House. I drove up along the long dirt road to his home and was welcomed by brightly colored textiles drying on the lawn. Walking into the complex I saw the block printers rhythmically stamping away at their fabrics as I passed the workshop.

The Block Print House largely works with international brands to produce custom orders, they develop some designs for local markets as well. Deepak also gives tours and holds workshops for tourists who would like to learn more about the process. He also has some stock in the showroom for purchase, and it’s hard to leave without getting something. After seeing the artists in action and the skill they have to create such flawless pieces, I just had to take some fabric home with me for future projects. Not to mention, the prices was extremely reasonable for beautiful artisan-made products.

The Process

The process for each textile is different depending on the design. I’ll take you through the basic steps of creating block print textiles – carving the blocks, block printing, mud resist dyeing and dyeing the textiles.

BLOCK CARVING | First, they source the fabrics locally and wash and dye the fabric the base color and let the fabric dry. Then the fabric is ready for block printing or resist dyeing, depending on the design. Both processes require wooden blocks for printing. The wooden blocks are sourced from a local block carver, about a 10-minute drive away. They carve the blocks out of hard teak wood. After giving the artisans a printed or hand-drawn design, they will then copy the design onto the block. Depending on the complexity of the design one block can take several days or a week.  The Block Print House had hundreds of blocks in their workshop, with varying designs from traditional and floral to minimalist and geometric.

BLOCK PRINTING | The blocks are then used to print designs on the textile. This is either done with azo-free dyes, mud for resist dyeing and a bleaching solution to create different effects. In the picture to the right, the artisan is adding a second color to the floral pattern. This is very difficult because you have to match up everything perfectly. I had a chance to try block printing (with just one color) and it was extremely challenging to maintain consistency. Mine ended up too blotchy or slightly crooked, even though I was trying so hard to match up to the patterns and not put too much ink or press too hard.

I loved seeing the range of different designs, it would have been fun to just experiment and make designs at their workshop for a few days. The mud resist dyeing, in particular, would have been interesting to play around with. He showed us designs where they did mud resist printing before dyeing the whole textiles and others later in the process after block printing a pattern onto the fabric, and before dyeing the fabric for a second time. For example, in the picture below, she’s using mud resist dyeing to keep the flower part of the design pink, the whole fabric will be dyed with indigo next. It seems like there are endless possibilities.

The opportunity to try the craft hands-on was so helpful to understand how hard it is to master. The artisans in the workshop go so quickly and make it look easy. If you’re in Jaipur, you should definitely check it out. You can connect with him through Instagram, @blockprinthouse.