Ikat and Kalamkari Art are two distinctive art techniques. Here will discuss both of them.
Ikat Art
A dying technique used to pattern textiles using resist dyeing on the yarns before dyeing and weaving the fabric. By binding individual yarns or bundle of yarns with a tight wrapping applied in the desired pattern, the resist is formed in Ikat. The meaning of Ikat is ‘to bind’ in the Indonesian language. Then the dyeing of the yarns takes place. To create a new pattern, the bindings may then be altered and with another colour, the yarns are dyed again. For multiple times the process may be repeated to produce elaborate, multicoloured patterns. All the bindings are removed after the dyeing is finished and the yarns are woven into cloth. You can get beautiful Ikat sarees from saree retailers in Kolkata. In Ikat, the resist is applied to the yarns before they are woven into cloth whereas the resist is applied to the woven cloth in other resist-dying techniques such as tie-dye and batik. In Ikat, both fabric faces are patterned because the surface design is created on yarns rather than on the finished cloth. An apparent blurriness to the design is a characteristic of IKat textiles. The extreme difficulty faced by the weaver during lining up the dyed yarns so that the pattern comes out perfectly in the finished cloth results in the blurriness.
Kalamkari Art
A type of hand-painted or block-printed cotton textile produced in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana is known as Kalamkari. There are twenty-three steps in this process and only natural dyes are used. In India, there are two distinctive styles of Kalamkari art in India. They are Srikalahasti style and the Machilipatnam style. The ‘kalam’ or pen is used for freehand drawing of the subject and filling in the colours in the Srikalahasti style of Kalamkari. The work done is entirely by hand. A wide range of Kalamkari sarees is available with the top handloom saree retailers in Gariahat. Around temples and their patronage, this style flowed and therefore has an almost religious identity – scrolls, temple hangings, chariot banners and such others. Deities and scenes taken from the Hindu epics such as Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas and the mythological classics are depicted by this art. As the First Chairperson of the All India Handicrafts Board, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay popularized this art.
