Kalamkari Explained: History, the 23-Step Process, and How to Tell Hand-Painted from Printed

Type "Kalamkari" into any online marketplace and you will get thousands of results. Sarees, kurtas, cushion covers, wall hangings, phone cases. Some are beautiful. Some are digital prints on polyester with the word Kalamkari in the title because the word sells.

I see the confusion from both sides. As someone who designs and paints for a living, I care about the difference. As someone who talks to buyers, I know most people honestly cannot tell. Nobody taught them what to look for, and the sellers who benefit from the blur are not going to.

So this is the guide I would want if I were buying a piece today. What Kalamkari actually is, where it comes from, how a single length of cloth ends up taking close to three weeks to make, the two very different schools in Andhra Pradesh, and the practical checks that separate a hand-painted or hand-blocked piece from a factory print. It is long because the subject deserves it.

Quick answer: what is Kalamkari?

Kalamkari is an Indian textile art from Andhra Pradesh in which designs are drawn or block-printed on cotton or silk using natural dyes. The name comes from the Persian words kalam (pen) and kari (work), so it means "pen work." There are two recognised styles, each with its own GI registration: Srikalahasti, where artists draw freehand with a pen, and Machilipatnam, where carved wooden blocks are used to print the design.

Key facts at a glance

• Kalamkari has two GI-registered styles, both from Andhra Pradesh: Srikalahasti (registered 2005) and Machilipatnam or Pedana (registered 2007). Source: Geographical Indications Registry, Government of India.
• Srikalahasti Kalamkari is commonly described as a 23-step process taking 15 to 20 days per piece. Source: Moharis and Daughters of India process guides.
• Pedana, where Machilipatnam-style Kalamkari is made, sits about 13 km from Machilipatnam. Source: Krishna district One District One Product page.
• More than 1,000 artisan families in Pedana make vegetable dyes, carve blocks and print around 25 distinct Kalamkari textile types. Source: Deccan Herald report on the Pedana GI grant.

That is the short version. The longer version is where it gets interesting.

Statistics

Kalamkari has few market statistics, so these are the documented facts that matter most to a buyer.

• Srikalahasti Kalamkari was registered under India's Geographical Indications Act in 2005, and Machilipatnam Kalamkari followed in 2007. (Source: Geographical Indications Registry, Government of India)
• Making a Srikalahasti piece is commonly described as a process of up to 23 steps. (Source: Moharis; Daughters of India)
• That process is commonly cited as taking 15 to 20 days per piece. (Source: Moharis)
• Machilipatnam Kalamkari production under the GI tag is limited to Pedana town and neighbouring villages in Krishna district. Pedana is about 13 km from Machilipatnam. (Source: Krishna district One District One Product page)

Where the word comes from, and why it matters

Kalam means pen. Kari means work. Pen work. The name tells you the original idea: this is drawing on cloth, not printing on cloth.

That distinction has gotten blurry over time, because the second style that carries the Kalamkari name, the Machilipatnam style, relies on wooden blocks rather than a pen. Both are legitimate. Both are protected. But they are different crafts, made by different communities, in different towns, for different markets. Anyone who tells you Kalamkari is "always hand-painted" or "always block-printed" is telling you half the story.

Hold on to that. It comes back when we get to authenticity.

A short history, without the myths

Kalamkari in its two forms grew up in two different places for two different reasons.

In Srikalahasti, a pilgrimage town in what is now the Tirupati district of Andhra Pradesh, the work grew around temple life. Painted cloths were made as decorative hangings for the Kalahasteeswara temple, and the subjects were drawn from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Puranas. Over time the craft moved from temple hangings to clothing and other objects, but the narrative core stayed. If you look at a Srikalahasti panel, you are reading a story.

Machilipatnam, on the Krishna district coast, has a different history. It was a port town, and its cloth travelled. The craft developed under the patronage of the Mughals and later the Golconda sultanate, and you can see that in the designs. Persian influence shows up in the floral and tree-of-life patterns, and the imagery leans secular rather than religious. This was cloth made for trade, and for a long time it was an export commodity as much as an art form.

There is also the figure of the chitrakar, the travelling painter and storyteller who carried large painted cloths from village to village and narrated Hindu mythological stories from them. The cloth was part of a performance. Keep that in mind the next time you see a Kalamkari panel with dozens of small scenes arranged in bands. It was meant to be unrolled and talked through, not just hung and admired.

I want to be careful about one thing here. You will find Kalamkari described online as "3,000 years old" or tied to specific ancient dates. I have not found a firm source for those claims, and I would rather tell you what is documented than repeat a number that sounds impressive. What we can say with confidence is that the craft has deep roots in Andhra Pradesh, that two distinct traditions developed, and that both are still being practised.

Srikalahasti vs Machilipatnam: two crafts under one name

This is the single most useful thing to understand if you plan to buy Kalamkari, so I am going to slow down here.

Srikalahasti: the pen

In the Srikalahasti style, the artist draws the outline by hand with a pen cut from bamboo or tamarind wood (sources describe both, and individual workshops differ). The pen holds dye the way a fountain pen holds ink, and the artist draws freehand. Then colours are filled in, one at a time, by hand. Nothing in this style is stamped or printed. It is entirely hand worked.

The subjects are mythological. Deities, scenes from the epics, the Dasavataras, the Tree of Life. The compositions can be very dense, and because every line is drawn, no two pieces are exactly the same, even when the subject repeats.

The Srikalahasti style received its Geographical Indication registration in April 2005.

Machilipatnam: the block

In the Machilipatnam style, also called Pedana Kalamkari after the small town about 13 km from Machilipatnam where much of it is made, the outline is carved into wooden blocks. The blocks are dipped in dye and pressed onto the fabric, and colours are added with further blocks and processes.

Production under the GI tag is limited to Pedana and neighbouring villages in the Krishna district. Unlike the temple-linked pen work, this is typically done in workshops where block making, washing and printing happen side by side. The designs lean towards flowers, birds, geometric patterns and the Tree of Life, and the sensibility is more Persian than temple.

The Machilipatnam style was registered as a GI in 2007.

Why the difference matters when you buy

A block-printed Machilipatnam piece is not a "fake" version of a hand-painted piece. It is a different, honest craft. The real problem in the market is neither of these. It is the third category, the machine or digital print that borrows the Kalamkari name and look without either craft behind it.

So when you are shopping, the useful question is not "is it hand-painted?" The useful question is "which of the three is this: pen-drawn, hand-blocked, or machine-printed?" A good seller will answer that without hesitation.

How Kalamkari is made: the 23 steps

You will see "23 steps" quoted repeatedly for Srikalahasti Kalamkari, and the figure is consistent across the sources I checked. I will not walk you through all twenty-three one by one, because the exact sequence varies by workshop and a bullet-by-bullet list would suggest more precision than the craft has. But the logic of the process is clear, and it is worth understanding because it explains the price.

Stage one: preparing the cloth

The cloth starts as plain cotton. First it is washed to remove starch and impurities. Then it is bleached, traditionally by soaking in a mixture of cow dung and water and laying it in the sun. This sounds strange until you learn the reasoning: cow dung contains enzymes that strip sizing and surface residue from cotton without damaging the fibre, and the sun finishes the job. The result is an even off-white base.

Next comes a step that surprises almost everyone. The cloth is soaked in a mixture of myrobalan (the fruit of the harad tree, Terminalia chebula) and buffalo milk. Myrobalan is rich in tannins, which give natural dyes something to grip. The milk helps the dye stay where the artist puts it instead of bleeding across the cloth. After this, the cloth is washed in running water to take the smell of the milk out, then dried again.

By this point, no one has touched a brush. The cloth has been through several days of preparation.

Stage two: drawing and colour

Now the artist starts. In Srikalahasti, the outline is drawn freehand with the pen. The black line work uses an iron-based dye which deepens in colour when it meets the myrobalan treated cloth.

Then come the colours, and this is where the real labour sits. Each colour is made from a natural source, and each one needs its own handling. Red comes from alizarin or madder with an alum mordant. Blue comes from an indigo vat. Yellow can come from turmeric, myrobalan flower or pomegranate rind. Green is made by combining plant ingredients such as myrobalan flower with alum, and recipes differ from one workshop to the next.

Mordant is the key word. A mordant is a mineral or plant compound, alum being the common one, that fixes the dye to the fibre so it survives washing and light. Different mordants give different colours from the same dye, which is why the artist applies them only to the specific areas that need them.

If a deeper red is needed, the sequence of myrobalan, alum, washing, boiling in madder, and drying can be repeated a second time. That is one of the reasons the step count climbs so high.

Stage three: washing, boiling and finishing

Between colours, the cloth is washed repeatedly, traditionally in running river water. Srikalahasti artists have long used the water of the Swarnamukhi river for this. The cloth is boiled to fix certain dyes, washed again to remove excess mordant, and dried in the sun. At the end, the resist is washed away, the whites are sun-brightened, and final colour corrections are made.

How long does it take?

The Srikalahasti process is commonly cited as taking 15 to 20 days per piece. For a large narrative panel it can be longer. Think about that against the price of a hand-drawn piece. You are not paying for cloth and dye. You are paying for the better part of three weeks of skilled, sequential work, where a mistake in step nine cannot be fixed in step eighteen.

The same logic applies to Machilipatnam, though the timeline differs. The fabric preparation is identical (scouring, cow dung bleaching, myrobalan and buffalo milk), and carved blocks are traditionally seasoned in groundnut oil before use so they hold dye well. The printing is quicker than drawing, but the dye chemistry underneath is just as demanding.

The colours you should expect

Natural dyes give Kalamkari a recognisable palette. Indigo blue, rust red, mustard yellow, black and muted green. These are earthy, slightly soft colours. They look settled rather than glossy.

This is a useful test in itself. If a piece is dominated by neon pink, electric turquoise or a highlighter-bright green, it was almost certainly coloured with synthetic dyes. That does not make it worthless, but it does make it something other than traditional natural-dye Kalamkari, and it should not be priced or described as one.

Stories on cloth: what the motifs mean

If you are buying Kalamkari as a collector rather than a casual shopper, learning to read the motifs changes how you see a piece.

Srikalahasti panels tell stories. A long horizontal panel might unfold a section of the Ramayana in scenes. A vertical piece might centre on a deity surrounded by attendants, with smaller narrative vignettes around the border. The Dasavatara, the ten incarnations of Vishnu, is a recurring subject. Figures are drawn in profile with large, expressive eyes, and clothing and jewellery are rendered with great care.

Machilipatnam pieces tend to be about pattern. The Tree of Life, with its curling branches, birds and flowers, is the best known. You will also see repeating floral borders and geometric fields. The Persian influence from Mughal and Golconda patronage is visible in the symmetry and the elegance of the florals.

There is a third relative worth mentioning. In Gujarat, a tradition called Mata ni Pachedi makes ritual cloths for the mother goddess using a similar technique, with natural dyes, myrobalan mordanting and a pen, along with block printing. It is sometimes called the "Kalamkari of Gujarat." Different tradition, different community, different purpose, but if you enjoy Kalamkari you will likely enjoy it too.

How to tell hand-painted from printed: a practical checklist

Here is the part you came for. None of these tests is perfect on its own. Together they get you most of the way.

Turn it over

On a genuine pen-drawn or block-printed piece, the dye soaks into the cloth. The reverse shows the same design, though it may be slightly softer. On a digital or screen print, the back is often noticeably paler, sometimes almost white. This is the fastest test and the one I would try first.

Look at the lines

Look at a repeating element, such as a leaf, a petal or a figure's eye. In a hand-drawn piece, the lines wobble slightly. Two leaves in the same border will not match exactly. In a block-printed piece, repeated elements will match closely because they come from the same block, but you will see small irregularities in registration and in how much dye each stamp carried. In a machine print, repeats are identical down to the pixel, and the edges are unnaturally crisp.

Look at the colours

As above: earthy and slightly uneven suggests natural dyes. Flat, saturated and perfectly uniform suggests synthetic. Natural dyes often show tiny variations in depth where the cloth took the dye differently.

Ask about the process

A real maker can tell you which style the piece is, where it was made, whether the dyes are natural and roughly how long it took. If the answer is vague or the seller changes the subject, you have learned something.

Understand what a GI tag does and does not tell you

The GI registration is a legal protection of origin. It means a product called Srikalahasti Kalamkari must come from Srikalahasti and be made by registered producers following the documented process. It is not a guarantee that every item carrying the word Kalamkari in a listing is genuine, and the word in a marketplace title is not a GI claim. If a seller says a piece is GI certified, ask who the authorised producer is.

Be honest about price

Fifteen to twenty days of skilled work cannot be sold for the price of a mass-produced scarf. If a "hand-painted Kalamkari" wall hanging costs less than the dyes alone should, something is off. I have written separately about what makes hand-painted Indian art worth the investment, and the same logic applies here.

For a fuller version of this approach across other art forms, see our guide to telling a mass-produced print from a genuine hand-painted piece.

Putting Kalamkari on your wall

Most Kalamkari is made as cloth, and that shapes how you display it.

Light is the enemy

Natural dyes are less colourfast than synthetic ones. Strong, direct sun will fade a piece over the years. Hang it on a wall that does not take hours of afternoon sunlight, or use UV-filtering glass if you frame it. A north-facing or lightly shaded wall is ideal.

Frame or hang?

A long narrative panel can be hung from a wooden rod, as it traditionally was. Smaller pieces look excellent framed with a generous mount, which gives the cloth room to breathe and protects it. Textiles do not like being pressed flat against glass, so ask your framer to use a spacer.

Palette and placement

The earth tones of Kalamkari are forgiving. Indigo and rust sit well against white walls, warm timber, brass and plain linen. A single large panel above a console or sofa can anchor a room. If you want help with the broader styling question, our guide to styling a modern home with traditional Indian art covers it in more depth, and how to choose wall art that tells a story will help you decide between a narrative piece and a pattern piece.

Care

Because the dyes are natural, treat the cloth gently. Avoid harsh detergents and tumble drying, and check with the maker before washing a piece for the first time. Wall hangings should rarely need washing at all. Dust them lightly and keep them dry.

Where EthniiChic fits in this conversation

I want to be straightforward about this. The cloth tradition of Kalamkari belongs to the artisan communities of Srikalahasti and Pedana, and if you want a genuine pen-drawn textile, the right place to find one is from those makers directly or from sellers who work with them and can name them.

What we do at EthniiChic is different. We work with Kalamkari's visual language, its figures, motifs and colour sensibility, and interpret it in our own pieces, designed and painted by hand. When you look at our Kalamkari collection, you are looking at our interpretation of a tradition we respect, and we describe it that way. I think that honesty is what lets us ask you to trust us on everything else.

If you are building a collection of Indian art for your home, here is how I would think about it. Buy a textile Kalamkari piece from a maker or a reputable source for the cloth itself. Buy interpretive pieces from designers whose work you connect with, for the design. Both belong in a thoughtful collection. They just should never be confused with each other.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kalamkari art?

Kalamkari is an Indian textile art from Andhra Pradesh where designs are drawn with a pen or printed with wooden blocks on cotton or silk, using natural dyes. The name means "pen work," from the Persian kalam and kari.

What is the difference between Srikalahasti and Machilipatnam Kalamkari?

Srikalahasti Kalamkari is drawn freehand with a pen and usually depicts mythological stories. Machilipatnam Kalamkari, also called Pedana Kalamkari, is printed with carved wooden blocks and favours florals, birds and the Tree of Life. Srikalahasti was registered as a GI in 2005 and Machilipatnam in 2007.

How many steps are there in making Kalamkari?

Srikalahasti Kalamkari is commonly described as involving 23 steps, including bleaching, myrobalan treatment, mordanting, dyeing, washing and drying. Sources describe a timeline of roughly 15 to 20 days per piece, though it varies with size and complexity.

How can I tell if Kalamkari is hand-painted or printed?

Check the reverse side, which should show the design clearly on a genuine piece but looks paler on digital prints. Look for slight irregularities in the lines and earthy, slightly uneven colour. Ask the seller which style it is, where it was made and whether natural dyes were used.

What are the natural colours used in Kalamkari?

Traditional Kalamkari uses indigo for blue, madder or alizarin with alum for red, turmeric, myrobalan flower or pomegranate rind for yellow, iron-based dye for black, and layered yellow and blue for green. The result is an earthy, muted palette.

Does Kalamkari fade?

Natural dyes are generally less lightfast than synthetic ones, so prolonged direct sunlight can fade Kalamkari over time. Display it away from strong sun, or frame it behind UV-filtering glass.

EthniiChic designs and hand paints Indian art for modern homes, and works with NRI clients around the world on pieces made to suit their spaces. We ship internationally and take commissions remotely.

Explore our Kalamkari collection | Commission a custom piece | Read next: The 7 classical art traditions every collector should know

Sources: Deccan Herald (Pedana Kalamkari GI report); Wikipedia entries for Kalamkari, Srikalahasti Kalamkari and Pedana Kalamkari; Krishna district One District One Product page; UtsavPedia on Kalamkari; Mata ni Pachedi (Wikipedia); Moharis, Daughters of India and iTokri process explainers.