An interesting question. Craft. Shells glued to a box? Something involving a piece of driftwood and macramé? Or egg cartons and toilet roll cardboards fashioned into, well, God knows what.

What I do know is that all the workshops we visit are places where what would be termed handcraft are elevated.  Centuries of cultural meaning imbue design: beadwork, painting, dyeing, weaving, all done the way they’ve been done for generations. No machines, no glue guns, no short cuts. 

In the tribal Ahir community we meet a lovely mother and two of her five daughters, all dedicated to the art of Ahir embroidery, featuring bold colours in silks and cottons with small mirrors stitched in. They welcome us into their home and we sit in a room that is part workshop part living room. The women sit comfortably on the floor, hanks of yarn by their sides, deftly stitching. We watch, transfixed by their deft speed.

The embroidery transforms fabric into pieces heavy with meaning and history. They’re also, quite literally, heavy — dense with stitching and the tiny mirrors. Each pattern carries stories of life, community and identity. Nothing is random. Every motif belongs.

The Kutch region in Gujarat, of which Bhuj is the capital, is home to 33 tribes. If you are thinking small, recalibrate your thinking. There are over 60 million people in Gujarat, and the Kutch tribes account for almost 9 million of them. These are not tiny, obscure enclaves – this is culture on a grand scale.

At the Life Learning Development Centre my ears bleed from the excited chatter of hundreds of school children, there to learn about culture and history. The Centre exists to preserve, revitalise and promote the design heritage of Kutch. It provides an opportunity for kids to get hands on, and for artists to train, develop, and also adapt to contemporary markets. The place is overwhelming, full of galleries and learning spaces. We tour room after room showcasing the motifs and design that are specific to various tribal groups. If your camel needs a new outfit you can get some decorative ideas here. By the end of our visit, you could hold a gun to my head and I still wouldn’t be able to differentiate between Rabari, Ahir, or any of the others with any confidence. I would, however, be able to say with absolute certainty that none of it involves macramé or egg cartons.

Across all the stops we make, the visit to the indigo workshop is a favourite, not just because of the fascinating process. This is an extended family business with father, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts all working in a vertically integrated enterprise.  From hand carding the cotton bolls, spinning it into yarn, winding the yarn onto hanks, dying the hanks, then weaving the fabric.

Our host patiently guides each of us at spinning the cotton bolls into thread. Do I need to say most of us do not show innate talent? Hell would freeze over before I created enough cotton for a g-string. The coordination is tricky, with the right hand gently on the spindle and the left stretching up to keep gentle tension, but it’s a proud moment when thread emerges.

Indigo dyeing in India is an ancient, 4,000-year-old tradition and the process is nothing short of alchemy. Cakes of natural indigo, derived from the leaves of the Indigofera plant in yet another time consuming and complicated ritual, are mixed with natural ingredients like lime and jaggery for vat dyeing. As an aside, Indigo will not dissolve in water – it repels it. More repellent, at one time stale urine was used. Pee was left outside for a couple of weeks to ferment before the indigo was added. How did anyone work this out? Who thinks, I know, let’s let horse pee sit out in the heat for a couple of weeks and use that. Great idea! In a short google search I find there are people who still do this, using their own urine.

Back to the vats. These are sunk into the ground and, brace yourself, goat and sheep droppings are scattered on the ground around the vats. In a “believe-it-or-not” mystery of traditional science, (like the urine as a solvent) this helps maintain the vat’s temperature year-round. Sustainable heating, countryside edition. You may wish to try this at home, given the cost of heating, though I’m not sure Council bylaws stretch to goat farming in the inner city.

When the vat is ready the colour is more of a yellowish green than blue. The yarn is dipped in the dye and when it’s taken out it is yellow, but as the air hits it the yarn turns blue as it oxidises. Before your very eyes you see the colour change. It is aired and then the dyer repeats the process as many times as it takes to achieve the deep indigo colour they seek. In the photos you can see the shades of blue in the hanks hanging on the wall.

When the yarn is ready, it’s on to weaving. It can take days to set up a pit loom, and as long or longer to manufacture the fabric. At this workshop women set up the looms and men are the weavers. They sit in pit looms where their feet smoothly work the pedals and hands pull handles sending bobbins skittering across the width of the loom. What appears to be a tangle of threads stretches along the length of the floor and emerges on distinct lines feeding into the warp.

Ajrakh block printing is a painstaking and exacting work involving multiple dyeing and drying steps. At the workshop we watch two workers follow each along and around a table measuring about 6m by 1.5m with a saree length of fabric laid out. Each man has an intricately carved wooden block which he dips into dye then carefully places the block on the fabric, taps it, and moves on. The second guy follows with the next layer, each print landing exactly where it should. With each successive layer the final pattern emerges.

This trip with All India Permit really is an mind blowing experience: the history, cultural stories and watching exceptional artists at work is a lot to take in, but we really appreciate the skills they demonstrate with such competence and ease when we attempt them ourselves. Fabric painting, spinning, block printing, embroidery, and what proves to be one of the most challenging, tie dyeing.

Now this isn’t what you are thinking – the 1970s calling and wanting their tie dyed t-shirts back. This is tying minute bunches of thread the size of the head of a match, resulting in tiny dots patterns, very like Aboriginal dot paintings in Australia. Complex patterns need multiple processes of tying, washing, more tying and dyeing.

While the two brothers who own and run the business are responsible for design, the tying is done by women working from their homes. The work is extremely intricate as the photos show. When all the dying and washing is done, the fabric is stretched out and all the cotton threads pop off, revealing the magic.

It would take several more blogs to fully describe the breadth and richness of the experiences this trip provides. Whenever we think we’ve seen unsurpassable expertise, a different skill blows our minds. The dedication, patience and passion is humbling in this increasingly fast world. They greet us with warmth and pleasure at our interest, and are generous with their time and information. Highly recommend if you have even the remotest interest in fabric, design, art, history or culture – I guess that’s everyone!