Breaking the Rhythm: Co-Designing the Rust Fresco Shirt

The Rust Fresco shirt, a Tharangini x Dhi Earth piece, originally designed for the collection unBlocking Archival Pattern showcased in ARTISANS’ Mumbai, is our favourite co-designed piece.

The idea was to reinterpret Tharangini’s vintage wood-blocks in a contemporary light. We were making an oversized women's shirt, and for the print, a collage that juxtaposes the old and the new. We shared this idea with our artisans, and Satish anna, Shama and the rest of the printing team pulled out exquisite designs from the archive of 6,500+ blocks. Vintage floral blocks, traditional body and border blocks, modern geometrics and textures - it was the most unexpected selection, because our minds are not used to seeing these blocks together.

The idea was to use none of them in the expected way. Border blocks could be scattered asymmetrically instead of bordering panels, textures overlapping Gudh blocks, all-over saree repeats were interrupted by rich geometrics and vintage jalis and bels were placed side by side with lines and dashes.

We then showed our selection to the colour artists. The blocks were so busy - ornate and intricate, traditional and modern - that we felt it was best expressed in a tonal collage: enough variation among the shades for each detail to stand out, while the colours blended into one another and kept the print cohesive despite the contrasting details. The base was dyed terracotta, and the print pigments were tones of rust, brick red, maroon and orange. Banu aunty and Yashodara mixed about 20 shades to sample before we locked them down. Colour mixing is challenging, and it depends on the fabric, the carving of the blocks, and how the base colours respond to the print colours.

Even after the shades were locked, the colours kept testing us. Organic dyes are perishable, so once a batch of mixed colour was used up, it had to be remade, and getting the exact shade again was very difficult. For the fabric we chose a light linen-cotton, easy and breezy, for an oversized shirt that falls and bunches up well depending on how it's styled. The soft fabric let the print do all the talking.

Printing was the most complex stage, because we wanted no two blocks to repeat one after the other. Master printers Kareem, Mallikarjun and Govindanna are used to repeating prints with remarkable precision. Here they had to change the block and the colour with every stamp, breaking their rhythm each time. The method asks for far more awareness: alignment and precision still matter, but so does knowing which block goes with which colour, and how to make each repeat irregular. It is also very time-consuming, since the colour and design change after every stamp.

Because the process was so lengthy, each printer did a few metres and swapped with another. Each of the three found their own rhythm in the new arrangement, and each worked out how to read and execute the print in their own way. As the metres were printed and the hands changed every few metres, you can see each printer's mark and understanding in the cloth.

That’s the story of the textile. After printing, the textile was cured and taken for stitching. Every piece is hand cut, stitched and finished. It took many hands, many ideas and many minds coming together, and a lot of hard work, to get it all right.