Route to Bagh is breathtaking. In the background are seen the windmills. The road is newly laid and extremely well built.
These are a common site in Bagh. The printing is done with natural colors and ingredients like myrobalan. The red is developed with Alum by boiling in Alizarin ( an ingredient of Alum). It is also known as alizarin printing. It is said that the minerals dissolved in the Bagh river provide that extremely rich red color to the fabric. The printing is done on cotton, chanderi, Maheshwari, Modal Tussar and Mulberry.
Printing is done with hand. All the three blocks gad, reikh and datta ( daat ) are used.
There are lots of words of wisdom you will find on the local shops, the above notice says "loan is a magic, we give you and you will get vanished....." so true sometimes !!!!
Visit to Maheshwar is inspiring. The township is reverberating with the sweet sounds of handlooms. A neat and clean place with an all pervasive presence of Ahilyabai Holkar dynasty, which is reflected in their philanthropic institutions.
Maheshwari is a fabric in silk and cotton. The difference from Chanderi, as we are told is in the count of weft and twist constructions of warp. In chanderi twisted yarn is used in the warp. Also in chanderi 100s count is used whereas in Maheshwari 80s count is used. But the real difference is in the woven border of chanderi, the inspiration from which is taken from the carvings of the Ahilyabai fort.
The picture above indicates the dobby used to create the famous Maheshwari Border.
So the iron frames are used to hold the handloom together. Look at the way the warp are arranged.
Look at the way the indigenous drop box motion is provided on the loom to change the shuttle.
Here we can see that gears are finding their way in to handlooms to make the process of weaving faster and painless.
It was enlightening to address a group of weavers. A great job is done there by the Handloom School. It was amazing to see how this next generation of weavers is evolved to take on this e-commerce revolution.
Watching Narmada at the sunset was a treat
It was great to see ambar Charkha spinning Khadi at Womens Weaves
Back in Indore, chance to see the Indigo Alizarin Process of Tarapur Cluster
Chance to Meet Sattar Bhai, doing Dabu with hand block printing
This is not all, in the next blog will write about my learning on the various borders in Maheshwar.
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