Block Printing 101

After a few long days of travel and less long days of sightseeing, the next few days were dedicated to getting some work done on the actual reason we were in India. That reason being block printing. If you’re wondering, “What’s block printing?” … well, so was I.

Much like when we started work on our Lucy Has Worms documentary (where I had no knowledge whatsoever of silkworms), I was once again starting at zero when it came to knowing anything about our subject matter. That said, block printing is basically the hand printing of patterns onto fabric using hand-carved wood blocks. And we were in Bangalore to meet with Padmini Govind to learn more about her, her block printing project (which her mother started many years ago), her company, and her efforts to run an international fair trade textile business. And that’s what we did. However, you’ll have to wait for the documentary to find out what we learned. And that’s what they call a teaser!

Suffice it to say, I learned a quite a bit in a short period of time and we interviewed significantly more people than I expected – especially considering we were really there just to scout out the project. We even got to try our hand at block printing which, dare I say, was pretty successful. As a bonus, we even got to keep a small block as a souvenir – which was carved while we there.