Living Blue

Final Presentations: NID Indigo Workshop with Swinburne and CAFA

On Thursday, 10 July 2014 at 12:30pm, the students of China Central Academy of Fine Arts and Swinburne University of Technology presented their final designs from the Living Blue Indigo Workshop hosted by National Institute of Design--Ahmedabad.

The brief was for students to share the cultural values most important to them through a design mofit that could be appropriately expressed by using the various indigo techniques to which they were exposed over the two weeks of the workshop.

Here are the final photos of the students with their designs. Video will be added at a later date.

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Student: Sarah

Home Country: Australia

Values: ahimsa (respect, non-violence), uniqueness/individuality, space (mental, physical)

Indigo technique(s): shibori double fold and tie dye to show gum trees and stars and the space and peace they bring, while expressing uniqueness

 

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Student: Yi Jun

Home Country: China

Values: love, passion, and change

Indigo technique(s): tie-dye with rocks to show change through construction sites and stones

 

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Student: Kong

Home Country: China

Values: less is more, the universe

Indigo technique(s): shibori radiating lines in an asymmetrical structure to represent everything

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Student: Fan

Home Country: China

Values: connections to the earth and continuity

Indigo technique(s): shibori to represent the stirring of the indigo vat, eddies move and continue the indigo

 

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Student: Dian

Home Country: China

Values: peace of mind, calmness

Indigo technique(s): shibori to represent the calmess felt in the Buddhist caves outside Mumbai and arashi pole to represent the anxiety of crossing busy streets

 

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Student: Xiao Mei

Home Country: China

Values: happiness of living in the now life, enjoy different cultures, internal/external things

Indigo technique(s): shibori radial lines to represent the centrality of the family relationships in China but ability for each member to find their own directions/paths in balance

 

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Student: Anna

Home Country: Australia of Italian Heritage

Values: emphasis of family unit, quality of appearence through detail, respect not based on heirarchy

Indigo technique(s): shibori with the motifs of the drying racks of indigo & the alkalization pots from the trip to Uravakonda, and tye dye representing individual respect not based on heirarchies

 

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Student: Yun

Home Country: China

Values: family, natural and human harmonious relations, and hunger for knowledge

Indigo technique(s): shibori of the Islamic typoface on Juma Mosque

 

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Student: H. Rui

Home Country: China

Values: seeing the sky, urbanisation

Indigo technique(s): shibori to represent the roof tops of Mumbai and Ahmedabad

 

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Student: Z. Rui

Home Country: China

Values: to travel all over the world, changing and adapting to everything

Indigo technique(s): clamp prints of triangles to make paper game East, West, North, South

 

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Student: Yu

Home Country: China

Values:

Indigo technique(s): shibori to make "the soul of the sea shirt"

CAFA Students Ajrakh Block Prints

The experimental ajrakh block prints of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts students.

NID Indigo Workshop: Ajrakh block printing demonstration

Ajrakh Block Printing of Abduljabbar Kathri

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, national craft awardee Abduljabbar Mohammed Khatri and his son Ahmed Khatri came to NID to present a demonstration of traditional ajrakh block printing with natural dyes. It is the most amazing 14 step process, which he first described to the group using a specially made teaching tool of each step in the process, then he demonstrated, and then the students tried for themselves.

Abduljabbar Khatri comes from 10 generations of ajrakh block printers and dyers from the Kachchh region of Gujarat, India. His father and his older brother are block printers and dyers. The Ajrakh technique is noted for its intricate designs all printed by wooden blocks with natural colors on both sides of the fabric. His workshop consists of 10 to 15 workers along with the Master.

The market for the Khatri Ajrakh block prints is the highest end of society, including collaborations with fashion designers, commissions of wealthy private clients, and museums.

We felt very honored that he would come to spend time with us, especially during Ramadan, which attests Sakthi's great relationship with the great craftsman and his family.

We will cover some but not all of the ajrakh process as it normally takes 25 days and we only had a two day workshop. A 2012 The Hindu newspaper article on the technique describes well each stage in the process.

Preparation of the materials: There are lots of natural plants and minerals that must be prepared for the dyestuffs and mordants--gums, indigo for the blues, madder traditionally but alizari for the reds, rubab for browns, and other colors made of natural roots and flowers. Once all the raw ingredients are prepared, the first step in the process can begin.

01 Saaj--Washing of the Cloth

The raw cotton fabric (occassionally silk) is washed in a mixture of camel dung, natural caustic soda, castor oil, and water. This cleans the cloth and removes any waxes or coatings from the mill that would keep the dyes from binding. This process is repeated over several days of drying and washing.

02 Kasanu--Treating of the Cloth

The fabric is then treated in a solution of harida also called myrobalan and water.

03 and 04 Rekh--Block Printing of the Outline

The first block print is the outline of the design. It is made of a paste of gum Arabica and lime powder. The Master always does the first print of the cloth and outlines the design on two sides.

05 Black Block Print 

The second block print is for all of the black areas of the design. The black dye is made up of rusted iron, ground powder of chickpea, and jaggery (raw cane sugar), which is placed in a pot and kept for 7-8 days, then extracted into water. This iron water is then mixed with powder of tamarind seed to make a paste. The black paste is applied by block to both sides of the fabric.

06 Kan--Printing of Alum Paste

The third block print is for all the red areas of the design. A paste consisting of tamarind seed powder mixed with alum (aluminium sulphate) is applied to both sides of the cloth.

07 Gach--Printing of Resist for Indigo

The fourth block print is to protect all the areas in which one does not want indigo dyed. The gach print paste consists of alum, mud (red clay), and millet flour. It is the sprinkled with sawdust to keep the mud from cracking.

08 Dyeing in Indigo

The fabric is then dyed in indigo.

09 Vichharnu--Rinsing and Drying the Fabric

The fabric is then rinsed and dried flat in the sun.

10 Rang--Revealing of the Colors

The cloth is boiled in a solution of tamarix (from the dhawri tree) + madder root powder, if you want an orange-red color, or alizarin (synthetic madder) for a red color, or rubab, if you want a brown color. The cloth is then washed in water and hung in the sun to dry.

11 Minakari-- repeating the resist phase, 07 gach, to allow for a second dyeing

12 Repeat of Dyeing in Indigo

13 Repeat of Vichharnu--Rinsing and Drying the Fabric

14 Repeat of Rang--Revealing of the Colors

In Ajrakh block printing, there are five motifs with three variations each, so a total of 15 motifs within the entire vocabulary.

There was a designer from 40 years ago from NID who worked with them to develop a contemporary language that is used for another market.

What is most important to remember is that the process, the motifs, and the culture are all one.

Swinburne and CAFA students make the cover of Ahmedabad Paper

The natural indigo vats of Shri Yellappa of Uravakonda

Getting up at 4:00am, the group took a hired coach on a six hour ride to the village of Uravakonda, which is situated halfway between the urban centres of Hyderabad and Bangalore. In the village of Uravakonda lives Shri (Mr.) Yellappa, the 90-year old master dyer of natural indigo. Joining us on the trip was Latha Timuri, who is the coordinator of the Dastkar Andhra design studio.

We drove through beautiful countryside, with smooth new tollways. The road only turned bumpy when we made the turn off to the village.

 

Once we arrived at Shri Yellappa's home, they gave us a tour of the set up for washing the cotton yarn to be dyed.

 

The process is summarised as following. NOTE: There are lots a details missing.

His wife shakes out the yarn (about three or four shakes) and loops it through her arm until she had three bundles. She then twists those together for use or to be stored.  The other group members got lots of photos of this. I don't like taking photos of people who I do not know well, so there are few photos of people.

The yarn is washed in an alkaline mixture made from indigo run off water. The water is made alkaline by filtering it through a local clay in a large terracotta pot.

 

The water is poured into a tub where the yarn is added and stepped upon--in our case by Shri Yellappa's son. The water and the stepping removes the wax within the cotton yarn and releases its natural fiber, which allows the dye to be absorbed.

 

The yarn is then beaten against a stone slab to soften it and remove excess water. The end result is a soft, wavy yarn, slightly tinted a light bluish-green.

 

Only men in this area of India do indigo dyeing. There is a lot of preparation of the indigo vats, which must be fed and stirred and cared for with great diligence and reverence.

Indigo cakes have to be grinded with other ingredients and water, which is fed to the vat.

 

Shri Yellappa has 16 vats kept in his home. You walk through the sleeping/sitting space and past a kitchen before coming to the vat room. The floor is raised and covered with a dung, dirt, and straw flooring.

The yarn is gently submerged into the indigo vat and then caressed from hand to hand in a rolling motion through the dye. It is then wrung out and hung out to dry.

The shift from the greenish color when the yarn comes out to the indigo blue is magical. Often, the yarn is dyed twice.

 

 

 

Indigo shopping in Hyderabad

On Saturday 5 July, the group travelled to Hyderabad to visit three types of shops that sell natural indigo dyed cloth. Sakthi, our NID host, selected the three to provide us with the widest exposure to the selling of indigo dyed fabric. This would prepare us for the following day's  trip to the village of Uravakonda, where master natural indigo dyer, Shri Kattubadi Yellappa has his vats.

The first shop that we went to was Malkha, which sells natural indigo and other natural dyed sustainable cotton fabric by the yard. The fabrics were stunning and the colors beautiful. The shop is kept dark, so we could not get good images, but the fabrics were beautiful.

 

The second shop that we went to was Creative Bee, founded by textile designer Bina Rao. She combines traditional and contemporary Indian fashion. We found beautiful ready made shirts, dresses, coats, duputtas, kurtas, sarees, and scarves made from hand woven cotton or silk. The majority of the textiles use 100% natural dyes and provides work to over 400 handloom weavers. 

 

The final shop was Darum Clothing, which provides only handloom garments. It is an initiative of Dastkar Andhra (DA), the Dastkar Andhra Marketing Association (DAMA) and partner co-operatives, which seeks to provide sustainable livelihoods for handloom weavers and dyers in Andra Pradesh in particular. They carry a range of clothing such as kurtas, sarees, duputtas, men's shirts, but also sell home wares, jewelry, and organic food and beauty products.

Kurtas weaved from Shri Kattubadi Yellappa of Uravakonda's indigo yarn was one of the items many of us bought in the store.

  

First attempts at shibori indigo dyeing at NID

Today, the students received a demonstration of various shibori stitching indigo dyeing techniques from Mr Prabhatbhai Desai of NID. We will find out when we return whether their stitching and gathering will work.

NID Indigo Demo 01: How to wash the cloth in cow dung

To naturally wash the cotton cloth before dyeing, it is washed in cow dung. The cow dung is a natural caustic agent that removes the natural fine coating of wax in the cotton and thus allows the dye to bind with the cloth. It also leaves the cloth and your hands very soft afterwards.