Refined Beautiful Hanuman - Cotton Applique Work

The spectacular Kalamkari painting is a visual treat for any art lover. Birds are indeed in a veritable paradise as they are in jovial mode in this well decorated tree. Branches of the tree and leaves as well as flowers are painted using natural colour patterns. Kalamkari is a type of hand-painted or block-printed cotton textile. The word is derived from the Persian words kalam (pen) and kari (craftmanship), meaning drawing with a pen. The Machilipatnam Kalamkari craft made at Pedana near by Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, evolved with patronage of the Mughals and the Golconda sultanate. There are two styles of kalamkari painting in India - one, the Srikalahasti style and the other, the Machilipatnam style. The Srikalahasti style of Kalamkari, wherein the "kalam" or pen is used for free hand drawing of the subject and filling in the colours, is purely hand-worked. This style flourished around temples and so had an almost religious tinge - scrolls, temple hangings, chariot banners and the like, depicted deities and scenes taken from the great Hindu epics – Ramayana and Mahabarata. Natural dyes are used in Kalamkari and it involves seventeen painstaking steps. The cotton fabric gets its glossiness by immersing it for an hour in a mixture of Myrobalans and cow milk. Contours and reasons are then drawn with a point in bamboo soaked in a mixture of jagri fermented and water; one by one these are applied, then the vegetable dyes.