Dabu mud-resist printing, and more than four hundred years of block printing by the Chhipa community of Bagru.
Dabu, the mud-resist printing technique at the heart of Bagru's craft, works by protecting cloth from dye. Folk accounts tell of an accidental discovery, when a mud-speckled garment resisted an indigo bath. There is no documented date for the beginning of the technique, so this page describes the craft by how it is practised.
The craft is the work of the Chhipa community, who have practised dyeing and block printing in and around Bagru, near Jaipur, for more than four hundred years.
The resist is a paste. Published descriptions mention clay, lime, gum and wheat chaff, and the recipe varies between workshops. It is pressed onto the cloth with a hand-carved wooden block, one impression at a time, and sawdust is sprinkled on the wet paste to stop it smudging. Only after that does the fabric go into the dye bath, most often indigo, where the pasted areas resist the colour and keep the cloth's original shade in the pattern the block pressed down. The paste is then soaked and beaten off, which reveals the design: instead of adding colour, the technique works by protecting the cloth from it.
Sanganer, a short distance away, is a separate registered craft, Sanganeri Hand Block Printing, and both Bagru and Sanganeri block printing are registered Geographical Indications. The natural dyes described for Bagru printing include indigo for blue, madder root for red and iron filings for black. The wooden blocks are carved from hardwoods such as sheesham or teak.
Because both the paste and the printing are done by hand, small differences between lengths of cloth are part of the craft. A machine can repeat a pattern exactly. Hand printing does not try to.
Related reading: what a GI tag means for a wholesale buyer, and how to verify one.