Inside The Ancient Art of Block-Printing

14 October 2023

Inside The Ancient Art of Block-Printing

Julia Canella | Inspiration | 14 October 2023

A look into the making of Amaya, which uses an intricate craft that boasts a long history – over 4,000 years to be exact.

For our spring-summer 23/24 collection, we partnered-up with skilled artisans based in India to create Amaya, a quilted cotton voile ensemble with a ravishing pattern, created through an ancient block-printing technique.

Preparing the wooden blocks and colour prepping

First, each wooden block is hand-carved by a skilled artisan.

Following this, the dyeing master prepares a pigmented ink for each block. Using a white-hued base, these inks are blended to achieve the desired hue.

For our Amaya collaboration, each carved block represents a different colour across the pattern.

Preparing the trays

These pigmented inks are then poured into wooden trays by colour, each one comprising a steel mesh, a thick cotton sieve, and two layers of muslin fabric.

These items help to filter the pigmented inks by removing any impurities, while also preventing the inks from over-thickening and sticking to the wooden blocks, which can cause undesirable fabric blotches.

The wooden blocks are dipped into these trays before being stamped on to the fabric.

Setting the fabric

The artisan places the fabric on a long printing table using pins, to ensure a smooth, even surface for stamping.

Stamping the fabric

The artisan carefully stamps each colour, one-by-one, until the entirety of the pinned-down fabric is block-printed.

Though quite large, the printing table itself only accommodates 100cm of fabric to be stamped at once, so the remaining fabric is re-pinned and finished thereafter.

Once the fabric is fully block-printed, it is finally cut and sewn to create the finished bed linen design.