How ajrakh has remained timeless

One of those motifs adorns an indigo cotton-silk shirt on display at the textile gallery of the National Crafts Museum in Delhi. Layered beneath a silk long overshirt and cotton trousers printed in the Machilipatnam style of kalamkari, the shirt is patterned with saucer-like medallions featuring floral motifs arranged within geometric forms in shades of indigo, red, black and white. The ensemble draws inspiration from Mary Cassatt’s celebrated painting, Lady at the Tea Table, says Kolkata-based designer Divya Sheth, who created the look more than a decade ago for her debut at Lakmé Fashion Week.

A few steps away is an indigo sari by artisan-designer Khalid Amin Khatri. It bears a pattern rarely seen in ajrakh—the motif shifts between honeycomb and ocean waves, creating an almost psychedelic effect.

These pieces form part of the ongoing exhibition, Ajrakh: The Blue Gold, at the gallery, offering visitors a glimpse into the many lives of a technique that originated in Sindh and Balochistan over 2,500 years ago and is now primarily practised in Gujarat’s Kutch region. Among the participants showcasing their work are Sonia Jetleey, Rajesh Pratap Singh, Anju Modi, Shelly Jyoti, besides Sheth and Amin Khatri.

The craft has travelled across geographies and generations while retaining its visual language of block printing and natural dyes, particularly indigo, the colour that earned it the moniker “blue gold”. The exhibition highlights how artisan-designers, fashion designers and artists are expanding ajrakh’s language for creative expression without losing sight of the craft’s roots.

“People largely know ajrakh as a traditional design or, increasingly, as a digital print, but not necessarily as a craft tradition or a medium of artistic expression,” says Sunil Sethi, the show’s curator and chairman of the Fashion Design Council of India. “The idea was to show the ways in which ajrakh has existed for centuries—as textile, art, fashion and even philosophy.”

That philosophical dimension finds perhaps its strongest expression in the works of Gurugram-based textile artist Shelly Jyoti. Her framed textile pieces, some stretching up to 6ft in length, reinterpret traditional ajrakh motifs—including those unearthed in Old Cairo—layering them with fish forms applied using stencils. “When many fish move together, they create an oceanic current; for me, it is a metaphor for self-discipline and collective action,” Jyoti says, explaining why fish recur throughout her work on display. “I didn’t feel the need to create new motifs because the old ones are already so precious. What interested me was how they could speak to contemporary ideas and remind us that change—whether in the way we consume, dress or live—happens when people come together. The fish express that best.”

Amin Khatri, however, has experimented with new motifs—like abstract human forms, concentric lines, mushroom-like shapes inside a pomegranate—visible in his indigo sari as well as abstract paintings, as a way to respond to market realities. “Ajrakh has become more famous because of digital printing and that’s affecting our business (because they are cheaper to make),” says Amin Khatri. One of his pieces, depicting Mumbai’s Haji Ali Dargah, is on display at the V&A Museum in London. “By creating newer motifs, we are trying to attract newer customers.”

That impulse to push ajrakh into new territories is visible in fashion designer Anju Modi’s work as well. For the exhibition, she has created three jackets using linen—a fabric she says has rarely been explored in ajrakh. “Linen isn’t usually considered an ideal surface for ajrakh because of its texture, but I was surprised by how supple it became after the printing process, especially after being treated with cow dung and mud,” says Modi, referring to two stages in the craft’s elaborate multi-step process.

For Modi, such experimentation is precisely what has enabled ajrakh to endure. “One of the reasons ajrakh remains one of India’s most popular craft traditions is because designers and artisans continue to experiment with it,” she says.

Conversations with the artists participating in the exhibition repeatedly return to two themes that they believe receive too little attention in discussions around ajrakh: its history, and how the handspun cotton and natural dyes used in the craft make it eco-friendly and overall better to wear.

The latter is particularly important for Sheth, who started her eponymous brand after a medical issue forced her to wear only naturally dyed clothes. “What do you get with a ₹20,000 branded shirt? Maybe a logo,” she says. “With ajrakh, you get handspun cotton printed with natural dyes that also take care of your body. What’s a better deal than that?”