Ghalamkari

This week, an amazing old Negah video showing all the stages of Ghalam-kari (also called qalamkari or wood-block printing), including the preparation of the cloth [@ 2.50 minutes], the first rinse [3.00], the printing [3.40 and 6.30]; and the carving of the blocks [5.55].

The video says [1.00] that the craft started in the time of Shah Abbas.  Though I’ve never seen any evidence for this; it was certainly very popular and a significant export in the nineteenth century.  That redoubtable traveller, Isabella Bird Bishop, saw the process of dyeing and rinsing going on upon the shingle flats of the Zayanderud at Isfahan in 1890:

“There is quite a population of dyers, and now that the river is fairly low, many of them have camped for the season in little shelters of brushwood erected on the gravel banks. For fully half a mile these banks are covered with the rinsers of dyed and printed calicoes, and with mighty heaps of their cottons.”

I can’t find the date of the video, but it seems likely to come from or before the 1970s, when the Persian handicrafts organization curtailed the rinsing of the cloth for ecological rea­sons, since the setting of the colours pollutes the river water: @7.30 for the second riverside boiling up, 9.40 for rinsing, 10.30 for the laying out of the cloths on the shingle.

The video is in black and white, but Mrs Bird saw “indigo and turquoise blue, brown & purple madder, Turkey red & saffron . . [with] a vile aniline colour showing itself here and there”.

Isabella describes the rinsing as much rougher than shown in the film:

“Along the channels among the shingle are rows of old millstones, and during much of the day a rinser stands in front of each up to the knees in water . . the cotton must be good which stands his treatment. Taking in his hands a piece of soaked half-wrung cotton, from fifteen to twenty yards long, he folds it into five feet [sic] and bangs it on the millstone with all his might, roaring a tuneless song all the time, till he fails from fatigue. The noise is tremendous and there will be more yet, for the river is not at its lowest point. When the piece has had the water beaten out of it a boy spreads it out on the gravel, and keeps it wet by dashing water over it, and then the process of beating is repeated.  The coloured spray rising from each millstone in the bright sunshine is very pretty.  Each rinser has his watchdog to guard the cottons on the bank, and between the banging, splashing and singing, the barking of the dogs and the shouts of the boys, it is a noisy and cheery scene.”

Click here for a stunning 360 degree view of a modern ghalamkari shop.