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Bagh Prints on a Maheshwari Saree Bagh prints from Madhya Pradesh are said to have been made for a thousand years although it is far from clear if this is actually true. The name Bagh itself comes from the village Bagh on the banks of the river Baghini, and some of the hand blocks used for printing are about 200 years old. There are tales that prints from this area were originally created by artisans who had, at some point, migrated from Rajasthan but there appears to be no evidence to either support or negate such tales. Older patterns are usually geometrical and were printed in black and red against a white background. Nowadays, however, far more colours are used. Bagh prints tend to be exceptionally bright, and it is believed that this is due to the mineral content in the waters of the river Baghini where they are washed. Fabric which is to be used for printing (usually cotton) is softened using raw salt, castor oil, soda and goat droppings, after which it is sun dried, a...

Unprinted Chanderi saree  The town of Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh is believed to have been established by a Chandella King, Kirtivarma, in the 11 th century although it appears that muslin Chanderi sarees began to be produced about 200 years later after the town was conquered by Ala-ud-din Khilji in the early 14 th century and weavers from Bengal, and later from Jhansi, migrated to it. Muslins from Chanderi were earlier made using a local wild onion for counting and sizing; they were apparently finer than Dacca muslins. Unfortunately, this quality of Chanderi muslin is no longer made. Contemporary Chanderi sarees are diaphanous silk, silk-cotton or pure silk. They are often embellished with a zari border, and zari motifs woven with supplementary weft threads may be seen on their bodies. The zari is patterned into a wide variety of bold designs although floral motifs dominate. In addition to this, Chanderi sarees are often printed with bagh and other traditional prints. Th...

Maheshwari Sarees Photo by  D Chandresh [ CC BY-SA 3.0 ] Although the city of Maheshwar in Madhya Pradesh is much older, Maheshwari sarees do not go further back than 1765 when Ahilya Bai Holkar made it her capital, and reportedly brought over weavers from Hyderabad, Gujarat and Rajasthan whom she proceeded to patronise. Although the earlier Maheshwari sarees are believed to have been made of silk, weavers in Maheshwar began making almost diaphanous sarees of silk, silk-cotton and cotton using designs from the fort at Maheshwar as inspiration. These designs continue to be the mainstay of Maheshwari sarees today; the sarees are marked by usually geometrical borders which are reversible and which tend to be about 2 inches wide. Golden, silver and copper zari is often used on the borders of these sarees (although golden zari predominates), and the end-pieces of the sarees are separately woven. The designs along the borders of the sarees are woven using supplementary warp th...