Hand block printing is one of India's oldest textile crafts, and one of the most loved. That popularity has a side effect: machine and digital prints that are made to look hand-printed, sold at a fraction of the price. In a product photo, the two can be almost impossible to tell apart.
The good news is that the differences show up once the fabric is in your hands. This guide covers what hand block printing actually is, six reliable ways to spot the real thing, and how to wash your block-printed clothes so the colours stay beautiful for years.
What is hand block printing?
In hand block printing, a design is carved into a wooden block. The printer dips the block into dye or pigment paste and presses it onto the cloth by hand, one stamp at a time, moving along the fabric and lining up each impression by eye. A design with several colours usually needs a separate block for each colour, and the cloth has to be left to dry and set between stages.
The craft is practised across India, in places such as Sanganer and Bagru in Rajasthan, Bagh in Madhya Pradesh, Kutch in Gujarat and Machilipatnam and Pedana in Andhra Pradesh, each with its own motifs, colours and techniques. The slow pace is the point: every metre of cloth is the result of many hours of skilled work.
6 Ways to Spot Genuine Hand Block Prints
1.Look for small imperfections that don't repeat
Because a person presses each stamp, no two impressions are exactly alike. You will see slight differences in how much dye each motif picked up, and edges that are a little soft or uneven. The key word is don't repeat. Some digital imitations copy a "flaw" into the design, but if the same smudge or gap appears identically every few centimetres, it was printed by a machine.
2.Check where the stamps meet
Blocks are pressed side by side, so look closely at the joins between one impression and the next. In hand printing you will often find tiny gaps, slight overlaps or a pattern that drifts a millimetre or two. A pattern that runs perfectly seamless across metres of fabric points to a roller, screen or digital process.
3.Turn the fabric over
Dye soaks into natural fibres like cotton and silk, so on a hand-printed piece the design usually shows through on the back, a little paler than the front. Many surface prints leave the reverse much lighter or even plain. This test is a useful clue, nut not proof: some machine prints also soak through, and some hand-printed pigments sit on the surface. Make sure to combine and use it together with the other checks.
4.Feel the print
Dye-based block prints feel like the fabric itself. If the design feels thick, glossy, rubbery or raised, it is probably a heavy surface print. Gently stretch the fabric: prints that sit on top of the cloth can crack or look cracked over time.
5.Notice colour variation within the motif
A block picks up a different amount of dye each time it is pressed, so the same motif will look a little deeper in one place and a little lighter in another. Perfectly flat, uniform colour across every repeat is a sign of mechanical printing.
6.Look closely at multi-colour designs
When a design uses several blocks, the colours may be very slightly offset from their outlines. This is called misregistration, and in handwork it is part of the charm. Printers sometimes use tiny pin marks to line up blocks, so you may spot small dots near the edges of motifs.