La Cachemaille

16/11/2024

01/01/2018

Get the Brief history of Hand Block Printing in Bagru to understand the traditional printing carefully. Block printing is the ancient printing technique that is done beautifully on fabric. Here you will see the whole hand block printing process used to follow this style of printing.

10/08/2017

Series Two #27 // Mulmul
Mulmul (pronounced muh-l muh-l as in mulberry) is a sheer, delicate and lightweight cotton muslin from the Sub-continent. The word mulmul is generally applied to fine cotton fabric slightly heavier than muslin. Historically, it was a fabric once exclusive to Indian royalty, which today has gained popularity all over the world.

Mulmul was first recorded in Roman times when it was known as textili venti (woven winds). For centuries, this gossamer-like cotton was highly-valued and sought-after, and indicated power, status and luxury.

In Mughal times, it could take up to six months to weave a 20 meter length of mulmul, through an incredibly laborious and complex process, starting with the producers of a specific type of cotton plant with very fine soft fibres and a short staple. The fibre was then carded by hand using the fine teeth in the jaw of a catfish. The soft fleece was stored in a skin of a Ganges mud eel. Hand spinning was carried out by Hindu women in the morning and evenings when the air was damper, or in rooms where the floors were constantly watered, then woven by men in a pit loom. The cloth was bleached and cleaned, and displaced threads were re-arranged by members of a guild of master darners. The finishing process involved beating, ironing, folding, baling and then marketing. It was therefore inevitable that such a fine and expensive muslin would require equally fine and complex decoration. The woven decoration was called jamdani, again hugely complex and time consuming, and the embroidered chikankari seems to have developed from this, as it took less time and provided the possibility of more detailed and flowing, but still complex, designs

This image: A woman in Dhaka clad in fine Bengali muslin mulmul, 18th-century. Words: Jamila Ibrohim

03/08/2017

Series Two #18 // Indigo
The word indigo, which comes from the Greek indicos meaning ‘of India’, refers to the blue colouring matter extracted from the leaves of various plants, grown in most corners of the globe. One of the world’s oldest dyes, indigo is also one of the most colourfast dyes and no other dye has been valued so widely and for so long. Until recently, it was believed that the techniques of indigo dyeing originated in and spread from India. It is now accepted that many groups around the world developed these skills independently.

This image: Dyers churn the indigo dye vat, from Indigo: the colour that changed the world.

03/08/2017

Series Two #20 // Kalamkari
Kalamkari or qalamkari is a type of hand-painted or block-printed cotton textile, produced in parts of India and Iran. Its name originates from Persian, from the words qalam (pen) and kari (craftmanship), meaning drawing with a pen. Kalamkari today is practiced in Andrah Pradesh.

Only natural dyes are used in kalamkari and it the process involves seventeen individual steps.
There are two distinctive styles of kalamkari art in India - the Srikalahasti style and the Machilipatnam style. The Srikalahasti style of kalamkari, wherein the "kalam" or pen is used for free hand drawing of the subject and filling in the colors, is entirely hand worked. This style flowered around temples and their patronage and so had an almost religious identity - scrolls, temple hangings, chariot banners and the like, depicted deities and scenes taken from the Hindu epics - Ramayana, Mahabarata, Puranas and the mythological classics. The Machilipatnam Kalamkari craft made at Pedana, evolved with patronage of the Mughals and the Golconda sultanate and uses wooden blocks to apply prints.

This image: drawing kalamkari, pic by Shatika. Words from Wikipedia.

24/12/2016

11/09/2016

Series One // #10 Pashmina or Cashmere?

From the 16th to the 19th century, the Kashmir valley (and to a lesser extent Iran) was the only region where the skills existed to exploit the full potential of fine goat fleece - known locally as pashm, a Farsi word originally meaning any kind of wool - to be woven into a patterned textile of superlative softness and delicacy. When pashm - the delicate fibre which gives the Kashmir fabric its special properties, but which is produced by goats reared on high altitude pastures in Ladakh and Tibet, hundreds of miles from Kashmir’s smiling valley - made its appearance in the West in the form of the shawl, it featured as “cashmere”. From the second quarter of the 19th century, as Europe’s modernising textile industry started sourcing materials from different regions of Asia to make shawls and other items, the term was extended to cover almost any kind of goat-fleece, not necessarily that of the Tibetan goat, as well as the knitwear and other garments fashioned from it.

The bulk of “cashmere” today comes to Western woollen mills from China and Mongolia, where it is produced pre-eminently by the Mongolian goat. If this had happened in the 21st century, such misappropriation of a location-specific term for an internationally produced and traded commodity could have been challenged under the World Trade Orgaisation’s TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) regime; as things have worked out, however, it has to be accepted that “cashmere” has become a generic name, divorced from its place or origin.

Properly speaking, pashmina is the material woven from pashm, and pashm is the downy undercoat of the Tibetan goat. That’s it. No other product deserves the term. Pashm/pashmina, accordingly, may be defined as the finest quality of cashmere, coming from the Tibetan goat; all pashmina is cashmere, but not all cashmere is pashmina. Read our journal article for more - http://www.wanderingsilk.org/single-post/2016/07/13/Pashmina-or-Cashmer

This image: A Kashmiri woman weaves a kani shawl. Kani, meaning “sticks” in Kashmiri, is an incredibly laborious form of weaving using hand-threaded weft threads, similar to Jamdani (Bengal) and Chok weaving (Laos).

Words: "Pashmina: The Kashmir Shawl and Beyond" by Janet Rizvi with Monica Ahmed, 2009


série // #10 Pashmina ou cashmere ?

Traduction automatique:

À partir du 16 ème au 19 ème siècle, la vallée du cachemire (et dans une moindre mesure, l'Iran) a été la seule région où les compétences existaient à exploiter pleinement le potentiel de chèvre fine toison - appelés localement pashm, un persan Mot qui signifie à l'origine de tout type de laine - pour être dans un tissu à motifs de textiles, de douceur et de délicatesse superlatifs. Quand pashm - la délicate fibres, ce qui donne le tissu du cachemire ses propriétés spéciales, mais ce qui est produit par des chèvres élevées sur les pâturages d'altitude au ladakh et le Tibet, des centaines de kilomètres de la vallée du cachemire sourit - a fait son apparition dans l'ouest sous la forme de Le Châle, il est présenté comme "Cachemire". depuis le deuxième trimestre de la 19 e siècle, alors que l'Europe est la modernisation de l'industrie textile a commencé de sourcing matières différentes régions de l'Asie pour faire des châles et d'autres articles, le terme a été étendue à Presque n'importe quel genre de chèvre-Toison, pas nécessairement celui de la chèvre tibétaine, ainsi que de la maille et autres vêtements de à l'ancienne.
L'essentiel de "Cachemire" aujourd'hui, vient de l'ouest de la Chine et la Mongolie, où il est produit par excellence par la chèvre de Mongolie. Si ce qui s'était passé au 21 e siècle, un tel détournement d'un terme spécifique de l'emplacement pour un produit sur le plan international et échangé des matières premières pourrait avoir été défié sous le world trade orgaisation est trips (trade related aspects des droits de propriété intellectuelle) ; en tant que régime Les choses ont tourné, cependant, il faut reconnaître que "Cachemire" est devenu un nom générique, détachée de son lieu d'origine.
À proprement parler, Pashmina est tissé à partir de la matière, et pashm pashm est le duvet de la chèvre du Tibet. C'est tout. Aucun autre produit mérite le terme. Pashm / Pashmina, en conséquence, peut être définie comme étant la meilleure qualité de cachemire, venant de la chèvre du Tibet ; toutes les pashmina est le cachemire, mais pas tous est pashmina en cachemire. Lisez notre article pour plus-http://www.wanderingsilk.org/single-post/2016/07/13/Pashmina-or-Cashmer
Cette image : une femme du cachemire tisse un châle de kani. Kani, qui signifie "bâtons" en cachemire, est une forme très laborieux de tissage à la main à l'aide de trame filetés, similaire à jamdani (Bengal) et tissage chok (Laos).

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11/09/2016

Series One // #10 Pashmina or Cashmere?

From the 16th to the 19th century, the Kashmir valley (and to a lesser extent Iran) was the only region where the skills existed to exploit the full potential of fine goat fleece - known locally as pashm, a Farsi word originally meaning any kind of wool - to be woven into a patterned textile of superlative softness and delicacy. When pashm - the delicate fibre which gives the Kashmir fabric its special properties, but which is produced by goats reared on high altitude pastures in Ladakh and Tibet, hundreds of miles from Kashmir’s smiling valley - made its appearance in the West in the form of the shawl, it featured as “cashmere”. From the second quarter of the 19th century, as Europe’s modernising textile industry started sourcing materials from different regions of Asia to make shawls and other items, the term was extended to cover almost any kind of goat-fleece, not necessarily that of the Tibetan goat, as well as the knitwear and other garments fashioned from it.

The bulk of “cashmere” today comes to Western woollen mills from China and Mongolia, where it is produced pre-eminently by the Mongolian goat. If this had happened in the 21st century, such misappropriation of a location-specific term for an internationally produced and traded commodity could have been challenged under the World Trade Orgaisation’s TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) regime; as things have worked out, however, it has to be accepted that “cashmere” has become a generic name, divorced from its place or origin.

Properly speaking, pashmina is the material woven from pashm, and pashm is the downy undercoat of the Tibetan goat. That’s it. No other product deserves the term. Pashm/pashmina, accordingly, may be defined as the finest quality of cashmere, coming from the Tibetan goat; all pashmina is cashmere, but not all cashmere is pashmina. Read our journal article for more - http://www.wanderingsilk.org/single-post/2016/07/13/Pashmina-or-Cashmer

This image: A Kashmiri woman weaves a kani shawl. Kani, meaning “sticks” in Kashmiri, is an incredibly laborious form of weaving using hand-threaded weft threads, similar to Jamdani (Bengal) and Chok weaving (Laos).

Words: "Pashmina: The Kashmir Shawl and Beyond" by Janet Rizvi with Monica Ahmed, 2009

28/02/2016

Découvrez comment sont fabriqués ces tissus merveilleux. Merci encore à ces personnes adorables.