Artist Renuka Reddy uses the age-old technique of Chintz which originated as a hand painted, mordant and resist-dyed patterned cotton cloth from India. By Ankita Jain
Age old techniques look striking when somebody plays with them in an imaginative and innovative way. And this is Renuka Reddy’s way of making a point as an artist through hand painted chintz. A technique which involves layer after layer of perfection that is painstakingly painted using natural materials such as buffalo milk, natural dyes, mordants, wax and dung.
Textiles have a long and distinguished history in the Indian sub-continent. The technique of mordant dyeing, which gives intense colours that do not fade, has been used by Indian textile artisans since the second millennium BC. “Chintz originated as a hand painted, mordant and resist-dyed patterned cotton cloth from India. A prized trade cloth for centuries, it had a profound impact on many textile practices around the world, from calico printing in the West to Javanese Batiks in the East in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was so popular at one time that Western countries banned its import in fear of economic instability in their local textile trades. Besides causing a revolutionary change in taste and fashion, it is the epitome of artistic and design exchange across cultures and continents. That from an era of such basic existence came a sophistication and technical excellence unmatched to date is astonishing,” says Renuka Reddy.
Renuka was hugely inspired by the illustrations in the book Chintz: Indian textiles for the West and decided to experiment. “The complexity involved in making chintz and the lost art of fine resist are some of the reasons that led me to work with chintz; to fulfill my need to work with my hands, and my desire to learn, to experiment, to discover.”
What set Renuka’s pieces apart is not only her fine drawing and use of traditional mordants and dyes but even more significantly, her revival of the technique of fine white resist. “This may seem like a minor technical detail, but these sinuous, hand-drawn lines of wax-resist had enabled the early chintz-makers to produce the spiralling and scrolling patterns in white against a coloured ground that made their chintzes unique,” she informs.
Elaborating further on the procedure, she explains, “Hundred per cent handspun and handwoven cotton cloth is washed and bleached in a series of steps involving sheep dung and drying in sunlight. It is soaked and rubbed with myrobalan, a source of tannin, buffalo milk and dried in sunlight which allows the mordants and dyes to be painted on cloth without spreading.
Black outlines are drawn with fermented iron called Kasimi, red outlines are drawn with alum mordant. Cloth is washed and dyed in a bath of madder to develop the reds and deepen the black. To bleach the reddish background, cloth is soaked in sheep dung and exposed to sunlight for seven to ten days after which it is treated again with myrobalan and buffalo milk to prepare it for the next round of painting.
Wax resist lines are painted on the cloth to get the fine white lines, which is a quintessential characteristic of historic chintz. Alum and Kasimi mordants are painted over the wax lines to develop pinks, purples, browns and many other colors. Cloth is washed again and dyed in a bath of madder. It undergoes sheep dung and sunlight treatment again to bleach the background to pristine white.
Cloth is treated with buffalo milk to prepare it for painting blues and yellows. Wax lines are again painted to retain the white background color in blue and green areas. Indigo is painted in areas to be blue. Historically, cloth was dipped in an indigo vat for the blue areas. Cloth is washed and boiled to remove wax after which pomegranate dye is painted in areas to be yellow and over painted on blue areas to get green.
Cloth is finally washed again and treated with sheep dung and sunlight for the last time. It is starched and polished to give a shiny surface.”
The exhibition is on till May 6 at Gallery Art Motif