Pedana Kalamkari

What is Pedana Kalamkari?

Pedana Kalamkari is cloth decorated by hand: patterns are stamped on with carved wooden blocks, and every colour comes from a dye made out of plants. It belongs to Pedana, a town in Andhra Pradesh's Krishna district, a short distance from Machilipatnam, and it is classed as a handicraft. The finished fabric becomes many things, among them saris, bedsheets, curtains and hangings for walls. Of the two Kalamkari traditions in India, this is the one that carries Machilipatnam's name.

Where does Pedana Kalamkari come from?

The style took shape while the Mughals ruled, and it was carried on under the Golconda Sultanate. Pieces of real age survive: a wall panel worked in this manner, dated to the 15th century AD, is kept on show at the Victoria Museum in London. The name now has legal standing too. Pedana Kalamkari was entered as a Geographical Indication from Andhra Pradesh, in the handicraft category, and that registration fixes the small area from which genuine work may come.

How is Pedana Kalamkari made?

Nothing here is done by machine. The printer takes wooden blocks, each carved with part of a design, and dyes prepared from plants. Block after block is pressed onto the fabric until its surface fills with pattern. The colouring matters as much as the carving, since the dyes are chiefly of plant origin. Registered rules also hold production to one small corner of Krishna district, so each genuine piece is the work of that one area.

Colours, motifs and borders

The palette is limited to what plant dyes yield, laid on cloth through wooden blocks. Designs may be pictorial as well as patterned: one example on record is a handkerchief showing the map of Andhra Pradesh. Because the same blocks and dyes serve every product, the look of a Pedana sari matches that of a curtain or wall panel from the same tradition, all of it stamped by hand.

How Pedana Kalamkari is worn

Pedana cloth reaches the body as saris, draped in the ordinary way; no special drape is recorded for it. Much of its output serves the home instead: bedsheets, curtains and wall hangings, with small pieces such as handkerchiefs. The same block-printed, plant-dyed surface may thus wrap a wearer on one day and cover a bed or a wall on another.

Styles of Pedana Kalamkari

Kalamkari in India has two styles, and this is one of them, the Machilipatnam style; the other is the Srikalahasti style. The Pedana branch is the one done with blocks and plant dyes. Its output varies by use: lengths for saris, wide cloth for bedsheets and curtains, panels for walls and small pieces like handkerchiefs. What they share is the same hand-stamped, plant-dyed surface.

What Pedana Kalamkari means

The craft has official standing: it is registered as a Geographical Indication from Andhra Pradesh under the handicraft category. That protection is practical as well as symbolic, since the registered rules allow only Pedana, with Polavaram and Kappaladoddi of Guduru mandal nearby, to produce work sold under the name. Its reach has long been wider than its home: a 15th-century wall hanging in this style sits in the Victoria Museum in London.

Questions people ask about Pedana Kalamkari

Good reading and sources

• Pedana Kalamkari made of natural colours gets GI tagDeccan Herald, Article

• Pedana kalamkari on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data