India Textile Tour ---Day 10

Today a trip to the outer environs of Bangalore, to Renuka Reddy's Redtree Handcrafted Textiles Studio. Because her studio uses intricate resist-dyeing techniques, in addition to hand-painting with a kalem (a very thin bamboo pen) on hand-spun and hand-woven cotton, she believes what she is doing is unique. I would say not only unique but exceptionally beautiful. There is literally no one left in the world who knows how to make chintz in the traditional way, so everything Renuka does is an experiment, and she has notebooks filled with results.

A lesson on fabric prep

She demonstrated, step by step, what she has discovered so far. Her biggest sticking point at this time is finding some way to make fine wax lines before the wax solidifies and she can't draw without heating up the instrument. To make the chintz she must first beat (with a child's cricket bat) the fabric, then soak it overnight in dung, then wash and beat it again. A soaking in buffalo milk (and it must be buffalo milk because of the fat content) washing and rubbing to smooth the cloth, and its finally ready for painting. The thin black lines are drawn using the kalem and ink made from iron rust and jaggery (raw Indian sugar). Colors are added, some with mordant (a substance used to set dyes on fabrics by forming a chemical bond with the dye which then attaches to the fabric), some with wax resist. This is getting to technical!! I'll stop now with the heavy stuff.

After leaving Renuka's studio we had lunch and then saw three guys in a very, very small shop weaving silk, and then went shopping. Lots of walking involved, plus the usual Indian steps, all the wrong size and made out of marble so sometimes slippery.

A chintz by Renuka Reddy

Renuka's mom is a quilter

Show and tell in Bangalore

Showing the goods

An incredibly tiny, hot

noisy silk weaving shop