Kalamkari in which word kalam represents 'Pen' and kari as 'Craftmanship' this form of art dates back to 3000BC orginating from south easteren part of India from the state of Andhra Pradesh
A piece of cloth that represents the historic artwork. This form of artwork is represented with elegant colors on a piece of cotton cloth mainly dipicting beauty of nature and attractive patterns with eye catching color variations. The art of painting on cloth dates back to indian historic times and is believed that this specific form of artwork traces its origin to wondering minstrels called chitragatis in 13th century.
Chitragatis were the group of nomadic singers, painters and musicians coming from the tales of hindu epics like Mahabharat and Ramayan. They started dipicting the stories on large piece of cloth which were painted with vegitables and plant dyes which were then hung in temples.
There are number of steps involved to make this painting starting by taking a cotton cloth which is put into a solution of cow dung and bleach for several hours due to which the texture of the cloth become adequate afterwhich it is dissolved into chebula fruit and bufflow milk this helps the natural dyes to stay on the cloth for ages then the cloth is washed with water.
Now number of people are against the use of chemical colors which are harming the enviornment so this form of artwork should be on a boom but sadly it is less recognised. The large production of high tech equipments such as machine looms and printed textile is also one of the reasons for the extinction of such and similar type of artwork
2 Types of kalamkari Artwork
Srikalahasti Style
Srikalahasti also is the name of a town in Andhra Pradesh and is also the origin of such type of kalamkari style paintings dipicting hindu gods and there stories with the help of paintings and has a huge connection with hindu religion.
Image Credits ( This is the best example of one such painting i can find )
Machilipatnam Style
This type of artwork mainly have attractive patterns that resembles indian mythological stories that are a crutial part of Indian culture and history the themes of such artwork comes from Forts, Temples and palaces in India.
Thank you all for reading 😃