Kalamkari Craft

Kalamkari takes two forms. Srikalahasti work is drawn freehand with a kalam — a bamboo pen — and coloured in by hand. Pedana work, named for a town in Andhra Pradesh and also called Machilipatnam kalamkari, is block printed. Both use natural dyes, and a single length passes through some twenty-three stages before it is finished.

Here that becomes kalamkari kurtis and kurtas, kalamkari tops and shirts, and kalamkari blouses — in cotton and cotton silk, sometimes across the whole cloth, sometimes combined with ikat or a plain panel.