Turn it over.
That is the first check, and most of the time it is the only one you need. A handblock print is dye pushed through cloth by hand, one carved block and one colour at a time. A screen print is pigment laid on the face of it. The back of the garment tells you which you are holding, before anybody has to take your word for anything.
What it actually is
A design is cut into a block of wood — one block per colour, so a print with four colours needs four blocks and four passes. The printer dips the block, sets it on the cloth, strikes it with the heel of the hand, lifts, moves along by eye, and does it again. A single kurta length is a few hundred of those impressions.
The work is concentrated in Rajasthan — Bagru and Sanganer outside Jaipur are the names you will see most, Bagru for mud-resist and natural dyes, Sanganer for fine florals on a pale ground — and in Kutch and Barmer for Ajrakh, which is a different and much longer process again.
Four checks, on the garment in your hands
- 1. Look at the reverse. Handblock dye goes into the cloth, so the pattern reads on the back — paler, but clearly the same pattern. A screen or digital print sits much closer to the face, and the back is usually near-blank or a ghost of it.
- 2. Find where two blocks met. The printer aligns by eye, so along the repeat you will find small overlaps and small gaps. They are not flaws. A screen print has no joins at all because there is nothing to join.
- 3. Compare one repeat to the next. Same motif, slightly different — a heavier strike here, a lighter one there, a fractional shift in a colour. A screen print repeats exactly, every time, forever.
- 4. Look at the edges of a colour. Hand pressure pools dye very slightly at the edge of a carved shape. Machine printing gives a uniform edge with no pooling.
Any one of these on its own can mislead. Two together is an answer.
Why no two panels match
Because the block is placed by a person, and a person is not a machine. The variation is the evidence that nobody automated it. It is also why we photograph pieces rather than render them, and why the kurta that arrives is the same design as the one on screen but not the same object down to the millimetre.
If you want a print where every repeat is identical, a screen print is genuinely better at that and costs less. This is a real trade, not a sales line.
Why the first wash bleeds
Dye that has not bonded to the fibre rinses out the first time it gets wet, and on a hand-printed cloth there is more of it sitting loose than on a machine-printed one. That is why the instruction on our cottons is to wash them cold and on their own for the first two washes — not because the colour is unstable, but because the excess has to go somewhere and you would rather it was not a white dupatta.
What you are paying for
Hours, mostly. A screen can print a hundred metres in the time a pair of hands prints one. The premium on handblock is not a story about heritage, it is the arithmetic of somebody standing at a table striking a block several hundred times for one kurta.
Our handblock cotton pieces start at ₹1,799, and every one of them is cut to your measurements after you order. The catalogue is here, and the five silhouettes are here.