Kalamkari on Kanjivaram: The Art of the Hand Painted Silk Saree

Most silk sarees are finished when they leave the loom. A Kalamkari Kanjivaram is only halfway there. The loom gives it a heavy mulberry silk body, a woven zari border and a pallu. Then the plain body goes to the painter, and over many weeks it becomes a story told in vegetable dyes, drawn line by line with a bamboo pen.

At The Saffron House we paint Kalamkari on our own Kanjivaram silks, from designs drawn in our studio, using natural dyes. This is a guide to what that means, how the craft works, and how to tell a true hand painted piece from a print.

What Kalamkari Means

The word comes from Persian: kalam, the pen, and kari, craftsmanship. It names a way of colouring cloth that is far older than the word. Painted and dyed cottons from the Coromandel Coast were traded across the Indian Ocean for centuries, and fragments of Indian dyed textiles have turned up at sites as far away as Fustat in Egypt.

Two great schools grew up in what is now Andhra Pradesh, and they are worth knowing apart.

Srikalahasti: the pen

Around the Srikalahasti temple town, Kalamkari grew as a temple art. Painters drew long cloth panels with scenes from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Puranas, often with lines of Telugu text explaining each episode. Everything is drawn freehand with the kalam. This is the tradition our sarees belong to.

Machilipatnam: the block

On the coast at Machilipatnam, the craft took a different turn. Under the patronage of the Golconda sultans and the Persian trade, artisans used carved wooden blocks for the outlines and repeating motifs, with Persian flowers, cypress trees and arabesques. The pen is still used to fill in colour, but the block sets the design.

How a Kalamkari Painting Is Made

True Kalamkari is a dyeing process, not a painting process in the way most people imagine. The colours are not laid on top of the cloth. They are fixed into the fibre with mordants and developed in dye baths, which is why a good piece has such depth.

• Preparing the cloth. The fabric is treated with a solution of myrobalan (the dried fruit of the karakkaya tree) and milk. This helps the dyes take and stops the lines from bleeding.
• Drawing the outlines. The painter sketches the design with charcoal, then traces every line with kasimkaram, a black made from iron filings fermented with jaggery. It reacts with the myrobalan to give a deep, lasting black.
• Building the reds. Areas meant to be red are painted with an alum mordant. When the cloth is boiled with madder or chay root, only the mordanted areas turn red.
• Adding blue and yellow. Indigo gives the blues. Yellows come from myrobalan flowers or pomegranate rind, and greens appear where yellow is painted over blue.
• Washing between stages. The cloth is washed, dried in the sun and treated again between colours. A traditional piece can pass through more than a dozen of these stages.

A slow process gives a particular look: lines that are fine but never mechanical, colours that are earthy rather than bright, and a softness at the edges that no screen print can copy.

Why Paint on a Kanjivaram

Kalamkari has traditionally been done on cotton, which drinks in dye easily. Silk is harder. It takes colour differently, and a heavy Kanjivaram silk asks for patience from the painter. What it gives back is a glow under the colours that cotton can never have, and a saree with the weight and drape of a true Kanjivaram.

It also brings two crafts together on one garment. The border and pallu are woven on the loom with gold zari in the Kanchipuram tradition, so the saree has the structure and ceremony of a Kanjivaram. The body, left plain on the loom, becomes the painter's canvas. When you wear one, the woven gold frames the painted story.

Our Kalamkari Kanjivarams

Each of our designs starts as a drawing in our studio, and each saree is painted by hand, so no two are exactly alike. A few from the current collection:

• The Village Festival: a cream silk painted with dancers, devotees and Lord Ganesha among pillars, lotuses and clouds, framed by a gold tissue zari border.
• The Ashta Lakshmi: the eight forms of Lakshmi in round frames on soft beige, with a rose pink tissue zari border. A natural choice for Varalakshmi Vratham and Diwali.
• The Peach and Purple: a mythological scene with divine figures, arches and a peacock, set against a wide purple zari border.
• The Peacock: an earthy brown silk with hand drawn peacocks scattered across the body and a red pallu banded in gold.

How to Recognise Hand Painted Kalamkari

Printed "Kalamkari" is everywhere, and it can look convincing in a photograph. In person, a few things give a true hand painted piece away.

• The lines vary. A hand drawn outline thickens and thins as the pen moves. A print is perfectly even.
• The motifs are never identical. Look at two peacocks or two figures side by side. On a painted saree, they will differ in small ways.
• The colour sits in the fibre. Turn the fabric over. On a painted piece, the colour shows through on the reverse. A surface print looks much paler behind.
• The palette is earthy. Natural dyes give rust, ochre, indigo, olive and black. Very bright pinks or neon greens point to synthetic dyes.
• The silk is real. On a Kalamkari Kanjivaram, the border and pallu should be woven, not printed, with zari that shows on both sides.

Caring for a Kalamkari Kanjivaram

Natural dyes are beautiful, and they deserve a little care. Dry clean only, and tell your cleaner the saree is hand painted. Keep it out of direct sunlight, which can soften the colours over time. Never spray perfume onto the painted area. Store it wrapped in soft muslin, and refold it along different lines every few months so the zari does not crease in one place.

A Saree That Tells a Story

A Kanjivaram is usually admired for its weave. A Kalamkari Kanjivaram is also read. The goddesses, festivals and birds on the body were drawn for you to look at closely, and every time you wear one, someone will lean in and ask what the story is.

Explore the full Kalamkari collection, or book a video call and we will show you each painting up close.