We live in Bhuj. Within an hour's drive of this desk there are a dozen living crafts — not museum pieces, but things people still make for a living. This is a short guide to what they are, because most of what gets sold online as "ethnic print" never names the craft it borrowed from.
Ajrakh block print
Resist-dyed cloth in deep indigo and madder red, with white and black picking out the geometry. The name comes from the Persian ajar, meaning brick, and the motifs go back a very long way — the Priest-King statue from Mohenjo-daro wears a cloth with a trefoil pattern that looks unmistakably like ajrakh.
It is printed with carved wooden blocks over many stages of resist and dye, each one washed and dried between. In Kutch the centre is Ajrakhpur, a village founded by printer families who moved there after the 2001 earthquake damaged Dhamadka and its water.
Rogan painting
Castor oil boiled for the better part of two days until it thickens, mixed with vegetable pigment, then trailed onto cloth with a metal stylus that never touches the fabric. Half the design is painted, then the cloth is folded to print its mirror image — which is why Rogan pieces are symmetrical.
It is practised in Nirona by the Khatri family, and it very nearly died out. Abdulgafur Khatri received the Padma Shri for keeping it alive. Kutch Rogan now holds a Geographical Indication.
Lippan kaam
Mud and camel dung mixed into a relief paste, worked onto the inner walls of a bhunga — the round Kutchi house — and set with small round mirrors. The mirrors were practical before they were decorative: they throw lamplight around a windowless room.
Bandhani
Tie-dye, but the description undersells it. The pattern is built from thousands of individual points of cloth tied off by hand with thread before dyeing, so tightly that the dye cannot reach them. The finer the work, the smaller and denser the dots.
Rabari embroidery
Chain stitch and abhla mirrorwork on dark ground, made by the Rabari pastoralist community. Traditionally stitched into dowry pieces and animal trappings, with counted-thread borders worked without a drawn outline.
Khaarek embroidery
A counted-thread style where the ground is first squared off in outline and then filled block by block, giving it an almost architectural geometry compared with the free-flowing Rabari work.
Mashru weaving
A satin-weave cloth with silk on the face and cotton against the skin, woven in bold stripes. The construction exists for a reason: it let people who avoided silk against the body still wear it.
Namda felt
Wool pressed and rolled into felt rather than woven, then decorated with appliqué in bright cut shapes. Warm, thick and entirely without a loom.
Nirona lacquer
Lac turnery. Colour is pressed onto wood in bands while it spins on a lathe, the heat of the friction melting the lac onto the surface. Done well, the bands blend into each other as the piece turns.
Copper bells
Sheet metal cut, folded and locked shut without a drop of solder, coated in copper and fired. Each bell is then tuned by hand — hammered until it rings the note the maker wants. A set is tuned to sound right together.
Mundra batik
Wax-resist printing. Molten wax is applied where the dye should not reach, and the crackle that gives batik its character comes from the wax breaking as the cloth is handled.
Kharad weaving
Thick rugs woven from camel and sheep wool on a floor loom, traditionally by a handful of families. Hard-wearing, geometric, and very slow to make.
What we do with them
We are not artisans and we do not claim to be. What we do is draw — our own patterns, in the idiom of each craft, printed by machine onto coasters, steel bottles and mugs. Nothing we sell is handmade Ajrakh or Rogan, and every product page names the craft and the village the design came from.
If you want the real thing, buy it from the makers. If you want the geometry on something you use at 7 a.m., that is what the Kutch range is for.
Written in Bhuj, Gujarat.