The sixteen steps of an Ajrakh

From mordant to madder, indigo to printing block — the slow choreography of a Kutch Ajrakh, told by the artisan whose family has done this for nine generations.

An Ajrakh is not printed so much as it is coaxed into being. Before a single block touches cloth, the fabric is washed, soaked in a solution of camel dung and castor oil, and left to rest. That resting is not idleness. It is the cloth learning to hold colour.

Then come the resists. A paste of lime and gum arabic is stamped on in the pattern that will stay white. Over it goes a mordant of alum, tinted with clay so the artisan can see where his own hands have been. Only then does the cloth go into the indigo vat, and then into madder, and then back again.

Sixteen steps is the number the artisans give, though the honest answer is that it depends on the piece. Each dip must dry fully in the Kutch sun before the next begins. A single length can take three weeks. Rain can cost a month.

What you are buying, when you buy an Ajrakh, is not a pattern. The pattern can be copied by a machine in an afternoon. What cannot be copied is the depth — the way the indigo sits in layers rather than on the surface, so that the blue seems to come from inside the cloth. That only happens with time, and time is the one ingredient no mill has found a way to shorten.