Citrus Print Silk Palmer Shirt

Woodblock printing is a painstaking hand-crafted process, indeed the world’s oldest and slowest method of printing on fabric. The famous stone bust of the Priest-King excavated at the ancient city of Mohenjodaro is draped in a robe that has been block-printed with a trefoil pattern –evidence that the roots of the technique go as far back as 2500 BC.

In Western India, where block printing is still quite widely done, the finest examples of the technique are practiced by a few craftsmen who have mastered the craft over generations. Wooden blocks made of locally sourced teak, are soaked in oil for fifteen days to soften the timber and prepare the wood for carving. Using special tools they have created themselves, master craftsmen hand-carve patterns in relief on each block, removing the wood in the areas that do not get printed. The lines of wood left to create the print in a pattern can be extraordinarily fine. It requires great skill to make sure that each chisel stroke is precise and that no bit of wood chips off. Any error in carving implies that the block will have to be discarded, as the resulting print will not be accurate. An intricate block can take a craftsman up to one week to carve and each colour in a pattern requires a new block to be carved.