Tradition · pen-drawn temple cloth · India
Śrīkālahasti kalamkari
Also known as Srikalahasti, kalamkari, temple cloth, kalam
The pen-drawn branch of kalamkari, made beside the Srikalahasti temple: the outline drawn freehand with a bamboo kalam wrapped in cloth that meters the mordant, the colours raised by successive dyeings and boilings, and the subjects taken from the epics for temple hangings.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 13.750, 79.700
Worth knowing
Every colour is a chemical reaction rather than a pigment: iron mordant with myrobalan gives black, alum gives red from the madder bath, and the cloth is washed in running water between stages. A large hanging takes months, and the artist must know the narrative as well as the chemistry.
Connections (1)
- Craft tradition ofMachilipatnam / Masulipatnam / Bandar
Masulipatnam's export trade was built on painted and printed cotton — kalamkari — drawn with a pen or blocked and fixed with natural mordants, and shipped to Persia, Burma and the Indonesian islands in quantities that made it the single most valuable Indian textile export of the seventeenth century. The temple-cloth tradition at Srikalahasti and the export tradition at Machilipatnam developed separately, with different designs for different markets.
On these journeys
Sources
GI registry; kalamkari records
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