Kalamkari Soft Cotton Sari

Kalamkari is a type of hand-painted or block-printed cotton textileproduced in Isfahan, Iran, and in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Onlynatural dyes are used in Kalamkari, which involves twenty-three steps. Thereare two distinctive styles of Kalamkari art in India - Srikalahasti style andthe Machilipatnam style. The Srikalahasti style of Kalamkari, where the "kalam" or penis used for freehand drawing of the subject and filling in the colors, isentirely hand worked. This style flourished in temples where Gods andGoddesses, Scenes of Ramayana, Mahabharata etc were painted.Machilipatnam style – Pedana Kalamkari involves vegetable dye blockedpainting of a fabric. It is produced at Pedana near Machilipatnam in krishnadistrict of Andhra Pradesh. This style evolved during the patronage of Mughal andpracticed by Golconda sultanate.Dyes for the cloth are obtained by extracting colors from various roots,leaves, and mineral salts of iron, tin, copper, and alum.[15] Various effectsare obtained by using cow dung, seeds, plants and crushed flowers to obtainnatural dye. Along with buffalo milk, myrobalan is used in kalamkari. Myrobalanis also used to remove the odd smell of buffalo milk. The fixing agentsavailable in the myrobalan can easily fix the dye or color of the textile whiletreating the fabric. Alum is used in making natural dyes and also whiletreating the fabric. Alum ensures the stability of the color in Kalamkari fabric.