Interview with Kalawati Devi, Damodar Nama, Krishan Kumar Dosaya and Praveen Dosaya of Chaubundi, Kaladera Rajasthan

Issue #007, Winter, 2021                                                               ISSN: 2581- 9410

We are the fifth generation of printers in our family and our family has been printing for at least a 100 years. Over the years many things have changed for us particularly, and for our community. We would like to share our journey with you.

Our company is called Chaubundi. We are from village Kaladera in Rajasthan, which is about 50 km away from Jaipur. We do block printing and screen printing in natural and chemical colours.

Chaubundi print from village Kaladera, Rajasthan

There are about eighty families from our Chhipa [textile printers] community in this village. Of these, only about forty individuals [not families] do an activity connected with block printing. Coming from a working caste, Chippa women and men have always matched shoulders and have worked together on printing and processing the fabric. The specialty of our area is dabu or mud resist. The process of natural dyeing and block printing in natural colours and mud resist is very labour intensive and needs many hands, so it is usually a family activity. The ...