GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT BAANDHANI

he famous idol makers of ahmedabad

a community who wears tie dye dupattas traditionally

Bandhani is one of the oldest surface decoration techniques used in India on textiles.

The two states where it is practiced are Gujarat and Rajasthan. The technique is said to have traveled to Japan, through china long back. Shibori as it is called in Japan is practiced till today.

 Some craftsmen migrated from Gujarat many decades back, they got settled in Madurai, in southern India. Today only few of them practice the same craft; the workmanship is quite simple, usually making scattered dots.

Gujarat and Rajasthan have very different kind of designs and very distinctive colour palates. Colours of Rajasthan are usually very bold and bright like magenta, parrot green, bright orange, bright yellow etc. While Gujarat has a very subtle, earthy pallatte, dull reds, mustards, blacks being the more popular ones.

a man in a baandhani turban

The contemporary tie and dye in Rajasthan is quite commercial, thanks to the big export boom there and the huge amount of tourism. Very few people do quality work, while in Gujarat; thankfully commercialism has no taken its toll with the traditional crafts.

The tying is usually done by women, who start practicing and learning when they are quite young .The very high skilled ones can have ten –fifteen years of experience. Tying was done by only one particular community traditionally -the khatri’s.

cotton tying

The Khatri community has a considerable presence in villages of Kutch .Most of the women are uneducated; they work from home, in their free time. This way they keep their tradition alive, as well as earn for the house and stay with children .This work gives them considerable freedom. Women often sit together in afternoons in their free time and do the tying .The entire villages are not very well connected to the cities, they have to travel for hours to get to the small nearby towns to get the work and deliver the same.

They get paid per piece, the in-numerable dots on the piece are counted and thus the women are paid. The skill level also affects the cost of their labour. For this reason getting very fine and highly skilled work can be very tough, as this kind of piece takes about 6-10 months .The women tying the same will get paid only once the piece is complete. Thus they prefer to do small pieces, with less labour so, it will finish quickly and they get paid quickly. Due to lack of continuous work they do sometimes shift to construction work on the roads.

We are dedicated and make sure that they get continuous work in tie and dye, so the women don’t have to go and use their skilled hands meant for making amazing textiles on the roads to break stones.

PROCESS OF TIE AND DYE

The fabric is soaked overnight or for 5-6 hours in plain water .This removes any starch, or chemicals, the fabric is than washed thoroughly and dried.

The selected designs are now printed on the fabric .There are two or three different substances used for the same, traditionally Geru a red earth was used for printing .Nowadays usually a weak solution of chemical indigo is used with oil or water.

A Traditional Design traced on silk fabric

The fabric is double folded after printing, as two folds are tied together. If the fabric is very thin than it can also be tied in four folds .In the past people use to tie on a single layer, it is very difficult to find this skill level in today’s times, also the cost of such a piece would be astronomical.

A Traditional piece being tied on Silk

Nakhalia-Finger ring

another version of nakhalia

A metallic finger ring calls Nakhalia is used to pick up the fabrics for tying it. A super fine cotton threads is used for tying a plastic pipe fasicialte the moments of threads. 

Close up of finger ring used for picking the pinch

The Thread, Pipe, Nakhalia

After printing, two folds of fabric are sewn together loosely by hand, so that they don’t move/slip during the process of tying.

The traditional weda or douvble dot design

Now they are distributed to women in various villages for tying .The distribution is done according to the tying skills of the women. Certain villages in Kutch are well known for superfine tying skills and amazing quality of work.

There are different skill levels required for tying on different fabrics for example cotton, silk, etc. The craftswomen who work on silk are more skilled than those working with cotton .The craftswomen who do filling or “Bharti ka work” are the rarest. Most of the traditional designs were made in such a fashion that the entire empty space was filled with tiny little dots very close to each other, filling all the empty space called Bharti in the local language.

Tying taking the Pinch of Fabric

Tying can take any amount of time from one week to one year depending upon the number of dots to be tied and the skill levels required.

rajasthani women tying on cotton

Tying is followed by dyeing .The dyers are traditionally males .Today most people work with chemical dyes, acid dyes being the most common kind used on silk. A weak solution of acid is added in the dye bath to make the dye fast.

multicoloured dyeing

tying with clamps to dye separate colours

The product is than thoroughly washed to remove any extra colour from the dyed piece. It is now bone dried before opening .The texture is maintained for a very long time in silk but in cotton it can not be maintained because of the nature of the fabric.

NATURAL DYES

Daruhaldar

tussah cocoons

GENERAL INFORMATION

In the long forgotten past natural dyes were used instead of chemical dyes .Chemical dyes were discovered about a hundred years back, but were fully accepted about 60 years back by the craftsmen.

a indigo vat being checked before dyeing

a huge alizarin dye bath being emptied

 The process of natural dyes is much more complicated and laborious as compared to chemical dyes. Earlier natural resources were easily accessible to the dyers from nearby localities, but today it is very difficult to find certain dyes. Some of the plants are so few that it is illegal to cut them for example AL.

There are many natural resources available in nature which can provide colour. These are minerals, animals, lichens and plants. Presently the most common sources used for dyeing fabrics are plant sources; while for painting mostly mineral sources are used. In antiquity quite a few animal sources were used for obtaining colours- Tyrian purple, cochineal red, Saint Johns blood, etc. Cochineal and lac are the only two sources which are still in use in sizeable proportion. Lichens have been used since time immemorial in various parts of the world especially in highlands, as availability is better there.  Lichens are a symbiosis of algae and fungus thread .Collection and regular availability might be difficult to commercialize the same, but colours of good strength can be derived from this source .A big range of reds, yellows, purples and browns etc ,can achieved from lichens around the world. There are various mordents like alum, ferrous sulphate, potassium dichromate, copper sulphate .In earlier times alum and iron were most popular, alum was used in its crude form in many places, iron till today is used in the form of rusted nails etc. The reason obviously must be easily availability .There are certain dyes which don’t require any mordent .The mordents not only improve fastness they also provide options in terms of colour, shade and hue. Each mordent has its own peculiarities –iron makes the colour of the fabric dark, as is commonly said a gives “a sad hue” to the colour, while chrome makes it bright.

PROCESS

Pre processing of fabric is quite laborious when dyeing with natural resources. Cotton needs extensive pre processing while silk can just be soaked, in hot water for about 5-6 hours .

white fabric lengths folded for dyeing

Cotton was traditionally soaked in oils, soaps, etc for days, this was followed by extensive beating and washing to soften the fabric and make dye absorption easy.

In case of cotton the fabric is dyed with Myrobalan before dyeing. Myrobalan is a rich source of tannin. For dyeing with silk Myrobalan treatment is not required.

myrobalan fruit

Mordanting is application of a mordant a salt which helps in fixing the dye on the fabric like alum, iron, copper, etc.

Alum should be used as a pre mordant, while iron is best as a post mordant.

Mordanting should be ideally done for about half an hour, and than the fabric should be dried without washing.

Dyeing can be ideally done for half an hour, when working with soft dye materials like flowers or fruit rinds etc. While it might take 2-4 hours for something like lac to get a good deep colour.

lac being crushed before being soaked for dyeing

Most of the natural dyes can be dyed using a direct method, that’s boil the dye material add the fabric, move it constantly and than wash the same.

Certain dyes like indigo and Al have a more complicated process.

indigo powder

indigo Vat

After dyeing the fabric needs to be washed thoroughly to remove all excess colours.

The soft dye materials like flowers, petals should be soaked for at least 5-10 hours to get the best results. While the hard materials like barks or roots should be soaked for at least 2-3 days to get a good colour.

marigold flowers in the courtyard

AUTHOR

KAMALDEEP KAUR