Penkalamkari Radha Krishna Lotus Upada Silk Saree

Description

Kalamkari is type of hand painted on textile produced in isfanhan and Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telengana. Only natural Dyes are used in kalamkari and it involves 23 steps. There are two distinctive styles of kalamkari art in India. Shrikalahasti style and the Machilipatanam style. The Shrikalahasti style of kalamkari (kalankari), wherein “Kalam”or pen is used of free hand drawing of the subject and filing in the colors is entirely hand worked. This style flowered arround temples and their patronage and so had an almost religious identity- scrolls temple, hangings, chariot, banners and the like depicted deities and scenes taken from the Hindu Epics- Ramayana, Mahabharata, Purans and the mythological classics. Seeping it in astringents and Buffalo milk and then drying it under the sun. Afterwards the red , black, brown and violet portions of the designs are outlined with a mordant and cloth is then placed in a bath of alizarin. The next step is to cover the cloth, except for the parts to be dyed blue, in wax and immerse the cloth in Indigo dye. The wax is then scrapped off and remaining areas are painted by hand, similar to Indonesian batik. To create design contours, artists use a bamboo or date palm stick pointed at one end with a bundle of fine hair attached to this pointed end to serve as the brush or pen. This pen is soaked in a mixture of fermented Jaggery and water, one by one these are applied, then the vegetable dyes.

Dyes for the cloth are obtained by extracting colors from various fruits, leaves and mineral salts of iron, tin, copper and alum. various effects are obtained by using cow dung, seeds, plants and crushed flowers to obtain natural dyed. Along with Buffalo milk, myrobalan is used to kalamkari. Myrobalan is also used to remove the odd smell of buffalo Milk. The fixing agents available in the myrobalan can easily fixed the dye or color of the textile while treating the fabric. Alum is used in making natural dyes and also while treating the fabrics, almunium ensures the stability of the color in kalamakari fabric.