Stage 1What a Craft Is

A craft is a thing made by hand and meant to be used. Both halves of that sentence carry weight, and both have been argued over for as long as people have written about making things.

Made by hand does not mean made without tools. A potter uses a wheel, a weaver a loom, a joiner a plane whose shape took generations to refine. The test is where the decisions are made. In a craft, the maker's hand and eye settle the result at every moment, and a lapse of attention can spoil the work. The English designer and woodworker David Pye called this the workmanship of risk, and set it against the workmanship of certainty of the factory jig, where the outcome is fixed before the work begins. Most real making sits somewhere between the two. A sewing machine takes some of the risk out of a straight seam; it does not take it out of a shirt that fits.

Meant to be used is what separates craft from the fine arts, though the border is porous and busy with traffic. A bowl can be beautiful and still hold dal. A Kanjeevaram sari is a work of great skill and is still made to be worn. When a craft object stops being used and goes behind glass, it does not stop being craft. It becomes evidence of how people lived and worked.

The four families

People have made things by hand from nearly every material they could find: metal, glass, stone, leather, horn, shell and grass. This guide covers four families that can be started at home, that need no forge or furnace at the beginning, and that India has practised with particular brilliance.

• Wood: carving, joinery and finishing. Stages 5 and 6.
• Textiles: sewing, embroidery, knitting, crochet, weaving and dyeing. Stages 7 and 8.
• Clay: hand-building, throwing on the wheel, firing and glazing. Stages 9 and 10.
• Paper: bookbinding, papercraft and marbling. Stage 11.

The families share more than it first appears. All four materials move with the moisture in the air. All four have a grain, a direction the maker must read before cutting, folding or pulling. All four reward preparation and punish the maker who skips the dull stage in the middle.

Who this guide is for, and how to use it

It is written for four readers at once. The beginner will find the main text written for them, with a First Steps box in most stages suggesting something to do this week at little cost. The practising maker and the specialist will find the For the Maker boxes, which carry the temperatures, angles, specifications and trade detail that matter once the basics are secure. The general reader will find the stories in the Sidebar boxes.

Part I is craft anywhere in the world: a short history, a workshop at home and its safety (read Stage 4 before you pick up a blade or open a bag of glaze), the four families in Stages 5 to 11, storage and preservation in Stages 12 and 13, which in Indian conditions is half the battle, and practice and selling in Stages 14 and 15.

Part II is India, one of the great craft cultures of the world: handloom silks and cottons, block prints, embroidery, pottery, wood carving, bamboo and cane, the Geographical Indication tags that protect some of them, and the bodies and markets through which a buyer can reach the people who make them.

Stage 2A Short History of the Hand-Made

For almost all of human history, everything that was made was craft; there was no other way to make a pot, a basket, a cloth or a boat. A short account can only pick out the turns that shaped how makers work today.

The oldest crafts

Wood and fibre rot, so the earliest crafts have mostly vanished. What survives is suggestive. Stone tools carry the wear of woodworking. Impressions of twisted cord and interlaced fibre pressed into fired clay show that people were making string, and something like cloth, many thousands of years ago. Some of the oldest pottery yet found, from sites in China and Japan, was made by people who still lived by hunting and gathering, which overturned the old assumption that pots arrived only with farming.

Paper is the youngest of the four families. It was developed in China, where tradition credits a court official named Cai Lun with its invention early in the second century CE, though finds of older paper suggest he improved a craft rather than inventing it. Papermaking spread slowly out of China, reaching the Islamic world, India and Europe over the following centuries.

Guilds

In the towns of medieval Europe, craft guilds controlled who could make and sell. A boy was bound as an apprentice to a master for a fixed term, became a journeyman who could work for wages, and might in time be admitted as a master. Ancient India had its own associations of traders and craftsmen, the shrenis, which appear in texts and inscriptions from around two thousand years ago; some received endowments and paid out the interest to religious foundations. Both systems did the same essential work. They kept standards, passed on knowledge, and kept outsiders out.

Machines

The great break came with the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century with the mechanisation of spinning and then weaving. Factory cloth was cheaper than handmade cloth, and it was sold around the world, including in India, where the consequences for hand-spinners and weavers were severe (see Stage 16). Within a few generations most everyday objects in industrial countries were made by machine, and making by hand became either a luxury or a sign of poverty.

The argument for the hand

The reaction came quickly. In Britain the critic John Ruskin argued that the factory's division of labour degraded the worker, and the designer William Morris tried to prove the alternative in practice, with hand-printed textiles, wallpapers and finely printed books. The Arts and Crafts movement that grew around them spread across Europe and to North America. Its contradiction was noticed at the time: hand-made goods cost more, so the people who could afford them were mostly the well-off.

In Japan in the 1920s the thinker Yanagi Sōetsu began the mingei, or folk craft, movement, which prized everyday objects made by anonymous makers. His circle included the potters Hamada Shōji and Kawai Kanjirō and the English potter Bernard Leach, who with Hamada set up a pottery at St Ives in Cornwall in 1920. Leach's A Potter's Book of 1940 became the working manual of studio pottery in the English-speaking world. In Germany the Bauhaus, founded in 1919, brought craft workshops into the training of designers.

India produced its own and most political version of the argument, when hand-spun, hand-woven khadi became a symbol of the freedom movement. That story belongs to Part II.

Craft now

Today most city people meet craft as a pastime rather than a living, and the pastime is thriving: pottery studios fill evening classes, knitting and embroidery have found a new generation, and online video lets anyone watch a master's hands. Video shows what the hands do, though, not what they feel, and it cannot look at your work and tell you what is wrong (see Stage 14).

Stage 3A Workshop at Home

Most craft begins on a kitchen table, and that is fine for a while. What turns a space into a workshop is not size but three things: good light, a solid surface, and a place for everything that is not spread across the house.

Space and light

A corner of a room will do for embroidery, knitting, bookbinding and most papercraft. Woodwork needs a bench that does not move when you push on it, which usually means a garage, a balcony, a terrace or a spare room with a floor you do not mind marking. Clay needs a surface that can be wiped with a wet cloth, a sink or a bucket nearby, and no carpets.

Keep the dusty and wet crafts away from the clean ones. Wood dust and dry clay dust travel, and they do not belong near fabric, paper, food or a child's bed.

Light matters more than beginners expect. Daylight from a window beside or in front of you is best. Add an adjustable LED task lamp. For colour work in embroidery, dyeing or glazing, choose lamps sold as "daylight", with a colour temperature of roughly 5,000 to 6,500 K and a high colour rendering index (CRI 90 or above), so that what you match indoors still matches outdoors.

The surface

A woodworking bench should be heavy and rigid, with a vice or a way of clamping work to it. A common rule of thumb for hand-tool work puts the benchtop at about knuckle height with your arms hanging, a little lower for heavy planing and higher for fine work. For cutting fabric and paper, a table at a comfortable standing height with a self-healing cutting mat saves both backs and blades. For clay, a sturdy table covered with canvas, which clay does not stick to, is the traditional choice.

Storage within reach

Pegboard, jars and labelled boxes stop tools wandering. Blades need a place where edges cannot be touched by accident (see Stage 12). Chemicals, glazes and dyes need their own lockable cupboard, never a kitchen shelf.

Starting kits

Buy the minimum and add tools when a project demands them. In woodwork, cheap tools that will not hold an edge are a false economy; in the other families, modest tools are fine at first.

Shared studios

Expensive equipment is often better shared. Many Indian cities now have pottery studios that sell clay, run classes and fire students' work for a fee, as well as woodworking spaces that rent bench time and weaving or embroidery workshops run by designers and craft organisations. A year on someone else's kiln or loom is the cheapest way to learn whether you want your own.

Stage 4Safety in the Workshop

Craft injuries are usually small and usually avoidable. Most come from a short list: blades, dust, heat, chemicals and fire, plus the slow damage of repeated strain. The advice below is deliberately cautious. Where a supplier's instructions or a product's safety data sheet say something stricter, follow them.

Sharp tools

A sharp tool is safer than a blunt one, because it needs less force, and force is what makes a tool skid. Most cuts happen when a hand is in front of the edge and the tool slips.

• Clamp the work so that both hands are free to control the tool.
• Keep both hands behind the cutting edge and cut away from your body.
• Never try to catch a falling chisel, knife or scalpel. Step back and let it fall.
• Change scalpel blades with the edge pointing away from you, and drop used blades into a lidded tin kept for the purpose.
• Keep fabric scissors, rotary cutters and needles out of children's reach.

Wear safety glasses when chiselling, carving, cutting wire or chipping glaze drips off a kiln shelf. Power tools are beyond this guide; learn them from a trained person in a workshop, not from a video.

Dust

Fine dust is the hazard most often ignored, because it does no visible harm for years.

Wood dust, from sawing and above all from sanding, irritates eyes, skin and airways, and long exposure is linked to cancer of the nose. Some timbers, including several of the rosewoods, cause allergic reactions in some people. Sand by hand where practical, collect dust at source, and clean with a vacuum cleaner with a fine filter or a damp cloth. A broom throws the finest dust back into the air.

Clay and glaze dust contain crystalline silica. Breathed over years, it can cause silicosis, a permanent scarring of the lungs. The rules in every good pottery studio are the same: clean with water, never sweep dry clay, do not sand bone-dry pots indoors, and mix dry glaze materials only while wearing a respirator.

A cloth or surgical mask does little against fine dust. Use a well-fitted disposable respirator rated FFP2, FFP3 or N95, or a half-mask with particulate filters. A beard breaks the seal.

Heat and kilns

An electric kiln fires to well over 1,000 °C. It needs clearance from walls and anything that can burn, a supply installed by a qualified electrician to the kiln maker's specification, and ventilation, because firing drives fumes out of clay and glaze. Never open a kiln while it is hot. Do not look into a spyhole during a high firing without the shaded glasses sold for the purpose, because the glow carries infrared radiation that can harm the eyes. Raku and other open firings, where pots are pulled red-hot from the kiln, belong outdoors and under supervision until you have been trained.

Irons, glue guns and wax pots for batik burn too. Cool a burn under cool running water for twenty minutes. Do not put ice, butter or toothpaste on it.

Chemicals

Glazes, dyes and mordants are chemicals, and "natural" does not mean safe.

• Glaze materials. Some raw materials, among them compounds of lead, barium, manganese, chromium, nickel and cobalt, are toxic. Beginners should use ready-made, clearly labelled commercial glazes and read the safety data sheet for each. Never use lead-bearing materials at home.
• Dyes. Fine synthetic dye powders can sensitise the airways, so measure and dissolve them wearing a respirator, never in the kitchen. Soda ash, used with fibre-reactive dyes, irritates skin and eyes.
• Mordants. Alum is the mildest and most useful. Copper and iron salts are harmful if swallowed. Avoid potassium dichromate (chrome) entirely; it is highly toxic.
• Solvents. Turpentine, mineral spirits and lacquer thinners are flammable and their vapours are harmful. Use them outdoors or with windows open.

Keep a separate set of pots, spoons and buckets for dyeing and glazing, and mark them so that nobody ever cooks with them. Wear gloves. Do not eat, drink or smoke where you work with clay, glaze or dye. If a chemical splashes into an eye, rinse it with clean running water for at least fifteen minutes and get medical help.

Ventilation and your body

Cross-ventilation from two open windows is the cheapest protection, and an exhaust fan pulling air out of the work area is better. Spray adhesives and spray finishes belong outdoors.

Knitting, crochet, throwing, sewing and carving repeat small movements thousands of times. Take a break every half hour or so, change position, and set your chair and bench to fit you. Pain that persists after rest, numbness, tingling, or a wheeze that comes on when you work are reasons to stop and see a doctor, not to push on.

See a doctor, too, for a cut that keeps bleeding after ten minutes of firm pressure, a deep or gaping wound, numbness beyond a cut, a burn larger than your palm or on the face, hands, feet or a joint, and any dirty wound if you are unsure your tetanus protection is up to date.

Stage 5Woodwork: Timber and Grain

Wood was once part of a living tree, and it never quite forgets it. Almost every problem a beginner meets in woodwork, from a split board to a drawer that sticks in the monsoon, comes back to two facts: wood has grain, and wood moves with moisture.

Hardwood and softwood

The names are botanical, not a measure of hardness. Hardwoods come from broadleaved trees such as teak, sheesham, oak and mango. Softwoods come from conifers such as pine and deodar. Most hardwoods are harder than most softwoods, but balsa, the lightest timber in common use, is botanically a hardwood. Bamboo, often worked alongside wood, is a grass, and cane is a climbing palm (see Stage 21).

Reading the grain

A tree adds a layer of wood each growing season, and its long fibres run up the trunk. That is the grain. Cut along it and a tool slices cleanly; cut into it at the wrong angle and fibres lift and tear out ahead of the edge, leaving a rough hollow. Before planing a board, look at its edge. The fibres run up towards one end like lines on a slope, and you plane "downhill", with them. If the surface tears whichever way you go, the grain is interlocked or wild, and a sharper blade, a finer cut or a scraper is the answer.

End grain, where the fibres are cut across, is the thirsty face of a board. It soaks up finish and glue, it loses moisture fastest, and it is where splits begin.

Wood movement

Wood is hygroscopic: it takes moisture from the air and gives it back, swelling and shrinking as it does. The movement is very uneven. Along the length of a board it is negligible. Across the width it can be large, and movement around the growth rings is typically about twice the movement across them.

This has practical consequences. A board sawn with its growth rings running across its face (flat-sawn) tends to cup as it dries. A board sawn with its rings standing upright on its face (quarter-sawn) moves less and stays flatter, which is why it costs more. A wide solid panel glued rigidly into a frame will crack, or burst its joints, as the seasons change; traditional furniture lets panels float in grooves for exactly this reason.

Moisture and seasoning

Freshly felled, or green, timber holds a great deal of water. As it dries it first loses the free water in its cells and only then, below the fibre saturation point, begins to shrink. Timber for furniture must dry until it is in balance with the air of the room it will live in, its equilibrium moisture content. That depends on local humidity, so a table made from wood dried for a Delhi winter will behave differently through a Kolkata monsoon.

Seasoning is the controlled drying of timber, either slowly in open air under cover or faster in a kiln. An old rule of thumb for air-drying is a year for each inch of thickness, though species, climate and stacking change the real figure a good deal. Stacking and storing timber are covered in Stage 12.

Buying timber

Timber yards in India usually price by the cubic foot. Sight along each board for bow, cup and twist; check the ends for splits, called checks; and look for small round holes with fine powder around them, a sign that wood-boring beetles are, or were, at work. The pale sapwood near the bark is, in most species, less durable than the darker heartwood and more attractive to insects.

Stage 6Woodwork: Hand Tools, Joints and Finishes

A small set of good hand tools, kept sharp, will make anything from a box to a chair. Power tools are faster, but hand tools teach what the wood is doing, and they are quieter, safer and far less dusty.

Marking and measuring

Accuracy starts before the first cut. A steel rule, a square and a marking gauge are the basic set. Experienced makers mark cut lines with a knife rather than a pencil, because a knife line is finer and gives a chisel or saw a place to start. Work from one face and one edge, marked as the reference, so that small errors do not add up.

Saws, chisels and planes

Saws cut either on the push stroke, like most Western saws, or on the pull, like Japanese saws. A pull saw can have a thinner blade because it is pulled taut rather than pushed, and many beginners find it easier to steer. Teeth are shaped either for ripping along the grain or for crosscutting across it.

Chisels pare, chop and clean out joints. Bevel-edge bench chisels in three or four widths cover most work. Push them by hand for paring and strike them with a wooden mallet for chopping.

Planes flatten, smooth and trim. A small block plane is the most useful first plane, and a smoothing plane comes next. Western bench planes are still widely known by an old manufacturer's numbering, so a "No. 4" is a smoothing plane and a "No. 5" a jack plane.

Sharpening

Nothing matters more. A blade is sharp when two flat, polished surfaces meet in a line with no rounding. The back of a new chisel or plane iron must first be flattened near the edge; after that, sharpening is mostly work on the bevel.

Joints

A joint is where most furniture fails, so the choice of joint matters.

• Butt joint: two faces glued together. Weak on its own, especially on end grain; needs screws, dowels or blocks.
• Halving joint: half the thickness removed from each piece so they overlap flush. Simple and reasonably strong.
• Bridle joint: an open slot in one piece receives a tongue on the other. Good for frames.
• Mortise and tenon: a tongue, the tenon, fits a closely cut hole, the mortise. The classic joint for tables, chairs and doors.
• Dovetail: interlocking fan-shaped pins and tails that resist being pulled apart. Used for drawers and boxes, and a traditional test of skill.
• Dowel joint: round wooden pins glued into matching holes. Quick with a jig; weaker than a good tenon.

Glue. White PVA wood glue is the everyday choice; it is strong, cheap and cleans up with water while wet. Traditional hide glue is less resistant to heat and damp, but it can be undone with warmth and moisture, which is why furniture restorers value it. Epoxy fills gaps and resists water, but it is permanent and needs gloves. Clamp firmly, not so hard that all the glue is squeezed out, and wipe off the excess before it sets.

Finishes

A finish protects wood from dirt and moisture and brings out its figure. No finish stops wood movement.

• Oils such as linseed, tung and blended "Danish" oils soak in and harden slowly, leaving a low natural sheen. They are easy to renew. Dry the rags flat or soak them in water because of the fire risk (see Stage 4).
• Shellac is dissolved in alcohol and applied with a brush or, as French polish, with a cloth pad in many thin coats. Beautiful and repairable, but marked by water, heat and alcohol.
• Wax gives a soft sheen and little protection, and is best over another finish.
• Varnishes, including polyurethanes, form a hard film. More durable on a table top, and harder to repair invisibly.

For spoons, bowls and chopping boards, use a finish sold as food-safe, or plain food-grade oil.

Stage 7Textiles: Sewing and Embroidery

Cloth is the craft material people handle most and understand least. Before stitching, it pays to know how a fabric is built, because that decides how it cuts, stretches, shrinks and wears.

Reading fabric

Woven fabric is two sets of threads crossing at right angles: the warp, running the length of the cloth, and the weft, crossing it. The finished lengthwise edges, which do not fray, are the selvedges. The grain parallel to the selvedge is the most stable; the bias, at 45 degrees, stretches. Pattern pieces are laid along the grain, because a piece cut off-grain twists as it hangs. Knitted fabric, like T-shirt jersey, is built of loops, stretches every way, and needs different needles and stitches.

Fibre matters as much as structure. Cotton and linen are strong and cool, and they shrink. Silk is strong for its weight but weakened by sunlight and sweat. Wool is warm and felts in hot, agitated water. Wash cotton and linen before cutting, the way the finished piece will be washed, so that the shrinkage happens before you sew.

Hand sewing and the machine

A few stitches carry most hand sewing: running stitch for gathering and tacking; backstitch, each stitch going back to meet the last, for a seam that will hold; slip stitch for nearly invisible hems; and blanket stitch to bind an edge. Use a thread no longer than your forearm, which tangles less, and finish on the back with two or three tiny stitches rather than a large knot.

A sewing machine does two things very well, a straight stitch and a zigzag. The treadle and hand-cranked machines still found in many Indian homes and tailoring shops sew a straight seam as well as any electric one. Match the needle to the fabric and change it often, because a blunt needle skips stitches. Press every seam as you go; pressing is half of good sewing. Commercial patterns do not all use the same seam allowance, so check before cutting, and make anything fitted first in cheap cloth.

Embroidery

Embroidery is decoration stitched onto finished cloth. A beginner needs a plain-weave cotton, a hoop to keep it taut, an embroidery needle, and stranded cotton, a skein of six fine strands that can be separated for delicate work. Transfer a design with a water-soluble pen, by tracing against a bright window, or by pricking the outline and dusting chalk through the holes. In Lucknow, chikankari designs are still printed onto the cloth with carved wooden blocks and an ink that washes out (see Stage 19).

Stage 8Textiles: Knitting, Crochet, Weaving and Dyeing

Sewing and embroidery start with cloth. Knitting, crochet and weaving make the cloth itself, and dyeing gives it colour.

Fibre and yarn

Fibres fall into three groups. Protein fibres come from animals: wool, silk, pashmina. Cellulose fibres come from plants: cotton, linen, jute, and regenerated fibres such as viscose, which is what most fabric sold as "bamboo" actually is. Synthetic fibres such as acrylic, nylon and polyester come from petrochemicals. The group matters for washing, for moths, which eat protein fibres, and for dyeing, since each group takes different dyes.

The band around a ball of yarn gives its fibre, weight and length, a suggested needle or hook size, a tension figure and a dye lot number. Buy enough from one dye lot for the whole project; two lots of the same colour can differ visibly in a finished garment.

Knitting and crochet

Knitting builds fabric from interlocking loops held on needles, and almost everything comes from two stitches, knit and purl. Knit every row for garter stitch; alternate knit rows and purl rows for smooth stocking stitch; alternate knit and purl stitches along a row for stretchy rib.

The figure that decides whether a garment fits is tension, or gauge: the number of stitches and rows in 10 cm. Before anything fitted, knit a square a little larger than that, wash and dry it as you will the garment, and count. Too many stitches, go up a needle size; too few, go down. Buy needles by their size in millimetres, since old British and American numbers differ.

Crochet makes fabric with a single hook, pulling loops through loops one stitch at a time. It is quick, shapes easily and needs almost no equipment. Its trap is terminology.

Weaving

A loom holds the warp under tension while the weft is passed across it. Lifting some warp threads opens a gap, the shed, for the shuttle; each crossing of the weft is a pick, beaten into place. Over one, under one makes plain weave; stepping the crossings along makes the diagonal ribs of twill. Looms range from a simple frame, through the backstrap loom, tensioned by the weaver's body and still used in north-east India, to the rigid-heddle loom popular with hobbyists and the pit loom of the traditional handloom weaver, set over a pit that holds the treadles. A jacquard mechanism lifts warp threads in complex sequences for patterned cloth.

Dyeing

Dye must suit the fibre. Acid dyes colour protein fibres and nylon; fibre-reactive dyes bond with cotton, linen and viscose; polyester needs high-temperature disperse dyes, which are best left to industry.

Natural dyes include indigo, madder for reds, pomegranate rind, onion skins, marigold, lac, and turmeric, a bright yellow that fades fast. Most need a mordant, a metal salt that binds dye to fibre. Alum is the usual one; iron darkens colours; tannins such as myrobalan help cotton take dye. Indigo works differently. It does not dissolve in water, so it must be chemically reduced in a vat, and it turns blue only when the dipped cloth meets the air.

Resist dyeing keeps dye from parts of the cloth: by tying, as in India's bandhani; by stitching and folding, as in Japanese shibori; by wax, as in batik; or by binding bundles of yarn before weaving, as in ikat (see Stage 17).

Test dyed cloth before trusting it. Cover half a swatch and leave it in a sunny window for a few weeks, and wash another with a white rag. Safety rules for dyes and mordants are in Stage 4.

Stage 9Clay: Hand-Building and the Wheel

Clay is weathered rock, broken down over very long periods into particles so fine and flat that, with water between them, they slide over one another and hold whatever shape they are pressed into. That property, plasticity, makes clay the most forgiving of the four materials to start and one of the hardest to master.

Clay bodies

Potters rarely use clay straight from the ground. They use clay bodies, blends made for a purpose and a firing temperature.

Preparing clay

Wedging kneads clay to drive out air pockets and even out its moisture. Trapped air can make a pot crack in the kiln, and uneven clay throws off-centre. The two common methods are ram's head wedging, rocking the clay forward into a shape like a ram's head, and spiral wedging, which Japanese potters call kiku-neri, chrysanthemum kneading, after the pattern it leaves. Wedge on canvas or plaster, never on a dusty surface.

Hand-building

Three methods cover most hand-building, and each can make serious work.

• Pinch: press a thumb into a ball of clay and pinch the walls up evenly while turning it.
• Coil: roll ropes of clay, lay them in rings and smooth them together inside and out. Almost any size and shape.
• Slab: roll clay into sheets of even thickness, then cut and join them into boxes, cylinders or plates, or drape them over moulds.

Every join needs scoring and slipping: scratch both surfaces, brush on slip (clay mixed with water to a cream), press them together and smooth over the seam. Unscored joins often look fine, then open in the drying or the kiln.

The wheel

Throwing follows the same sequence for every pot. Centring forces the spinning clay, with wet hands and braced elbows, into a smooth mound running perfectly true; it is the hardest step to learn, and nearly every later fault goes back to it. Opening presses down into the centre, leaving a base about a finger thick. Pulling squeezes the wall between the fingers of both hands and draws it upwards in several slow passes. Shaping swells the wall out from inside or collars it in from outside. Finally a wire is drawn under the pot to cut it free. When the pot has stiffened to leather-hard, it goes back on the wheel upside down for trimming, which cuts a foot ring and removes excess weight from the base.

Drying

Clay passes from plastic to leather-hard, firm enough to handle and carve, to bone-dry, pale, brittle and ready to fire. Unfired ware at any stage is greenware. Dry slowly and evenly. Handles, rims and thin parts dry first and pull away from the rest, so cover them loosely with plastic. A pot shrinks as it dries and again as it fires, often by a tenth or more overall, depending on the body.

Stage 10Clay: Firing and Glazes

Firing turns clay into ceramic, and it cannot be undone. Unfired clay can be soaked and reused indefinitely; once properly fired, the change is permanent.

What happens in the kiln

As the temperature climbs, the last water steams off, so ware must be fully dry and early heating slow, or trapped steam can crack or burst a pot. Organic matter burns out. At 573 °C the quartz in the clay changes its crystal form with a sudden small change in size, which is why heating and cooling through that point must not be rushed. Higher still, particles fuse, and at the top of a stoneware or porcelain firing the body partly melts into a dense, glassy structure: vitrification.

Most studio pottery is fired twice. A bisque firing makes pots hard enough to handle but still porous enough to soak up glaze. A glaze firing then melts the glaze onto the surface at the temperature clay and glaze are designed for.

Cones and kilns

Potters measure a firing with pyrometric cones, slender pyramids of ceramic material made to bend when they have received a set amount of heat. Cones respond to temperature and time together, which is what matters to the clay, so a slow firing bends a cone at a slightly lower temperature than a fast one.

Most home and studio kilns are electric: clean, predictable, and firing in an oxygen-rich atmosphere called oxidation. Gas and wood kilns can be starved of air to create reduction, which changes the colours of clay and glaze: iron gives the soft greens of celadon, and copper can turn from green to red. Raku pulls glowing pots from the kiln into combustible material for smoky, crackled surfaces, and needs training and an outdoor space. Pit firing, the oldest method, reaches low temperatures and leaves smoky, fragile, decorative pots.

Glazes

A glaze is a thin layer of glass fused to clay. Every glaze balances silica, which forms the glass; a flux, which lowers its melting point; and alumina, which stiffens the melt so it stays on the pot. Metal oxides give colour: iron for honey, brown and celadon; cobalt for strong blues; copper for greens or, in reduction, reds; manganese for browns and purples. Tin or zircon make a glaze white and opaque.

Glaze is dipped, poured, brushed, or sprayed in a proper booth. Wipe the foot of every pot clean or coat it with wax resist first, or it will fuse to the kiln shelf. Common faults include crazing, a network of fine cracks where the glaze shrinks more than the clay; crawling, where glaze pulls back into beads over dust or grease; pinholing; and running, from glaze applied too thick or fired too hot.

Food safety

A glaze that looks perfect can still release metals into food, especially if it is poorly formulated, underfired, or used with acidic food such as pickle, tomato or citrus. Lead is the best-known danger, but copper, cadmium, barium and others can leach too. For anything that will hold food or drink, use glazes sold as food-safe for your clay and temperature and fire them fully; treat crazed glazes as unsuitable, since the cracks harbour bacteria; label anything uncertain "decorative only"; and before selling tableware, have the glaze tested by a laboratory. Lemon juice left on a glaze overnight can reveal an unstable glaze if the colour changes, but a pass proves nothing.

Stage 11Paper: Bookbinding, Papercraft and Marbling

Paper is a mat of plant fibres formed from a watery pulp and dried. Handmade paper is formed sheet by sheet on a mould, traditionally from cotton or linen rag, or in Japan from the inner bark of shrubs such as kozo. Machine-made paper, mostly from wood pulp, is formed on a moving belt.

Grain, weight and acid

On a paper machine the fibres line up in the direction the belt runs, giving the sheet a grain. Paper folds cleanly and tears straight along the grain, and swells across it when damp. In a book the grain must run parallel to the spine, or the pages cockle and the book fights being opened. To find the grain, bend a sheet gently both ways: it gives more easily along the grain. Weight is given in grams per square metre (gsm); ordinary copier paper is around 70–80 gsm.

Paper made from wood pulp that still contains lignin, or sized with acidic chemicals, turns yellow and brittle within decades. Many books of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries now crack when their pages turn, while far older books on rag paper stay supple. Acid-free paper is made neutral, and buffered paper carries an alkaline reserve, usually calcium carbonate, to neutralise acids it meets later. For anything meant to last, use acid-free paper and board.

Bookbinding

A book is built from sections: a few sheets folded together in half.

• Pamphlet stitch: one section sewn to its cover through three or five holes along the fold. The best first binding.
• Japanese stab binding: loose sheets sewn through holes near the spine edge in decorative patterns.
• Coptic binding: sections linked by an exposed chain stitch along the spine, so the book opens flat.
• Case binding: the hardback. Sections are sewn, glued at the spine, lined with mull, a loosely woven cloth, and fixed into a cover of board and bookcloth.

The tools are few: a bone folder for creasing, an awl for holes, a bookbinding needle, linen thread rubbed with beeswax, a cutting mat, a steel rule, a sharp knife, and weights or a press to keep work flat while glue dries.

Papercraft

Origami is folding without cutting or glue. Quilling coils thin strips into shapes. Paper cutting traditions exist across the world, from Chinese jianzhi and Mexican papel picado to the sanjhi stencils cut for Krishna temples around Mathura and Vrindavan. Papier-mâché, pulp or pasted layers of paper, reaches great refinement in the painted boxes of Kashmir (see Stage 21). Cut with a fresh blade against a steel rule on a mat, and keep your other hand on the far side of the rule.

Marbling

Marbled paper is made by floating colours on a thickened bath called the size, drawing them into patterns, and lifting the pattern off onto paper. The size is usually water thickened with carrageenan, a seaweed extract. Colours, traditionally pigments mixed with ox gall to help them spread, are dropped onto the surface and combed with a stylus or rake. The paper, first brushed with a solution of alum so that the colours bind, is laid on the surface, lifted and rinsed. Turkish ebru is the best-known tradition; Japanese suminagashi, ink floated on plain water, is simpler; and European bookbinders used marbled endpapers for centuries. Beginners can start with thinned acrylic paint on a carrageenan size in a shallow tray, wearing gloves when handling alum.

Storage and Preservation

Stage 12Storage: Materials, Tools and the Indian Climate

A maker's irreplaceable things include more than finished pieces: timber seasoned for years, hand-spun yarn, clay mixed just right, a sheaf of handmade paper, chisels sharpened to your own habits. This stage covers what goes into the work and the climate it must survive. Stage 13 covers what comes out.

The enemies, one by one

• Damp. Above roughly 65–70 per cent relative humidity (RH), mould grows on cloth, paper and leather, steel rusts, paper cockles and timber swells.
• Swings. Each cycle of swelling and shrinking strains wood, joints, finishes and bindings, and warm humid air meeting a cold surface, such as the inside of a steel cupboard, leaves condensation.
• Heat. It softens wax and adhesives, splits wood and cane, and speeds every reaction that ages a material.
• Light. It fades dyes, yellows paper and weakens silk, and the damage cannot be reversed.
• Clothes moths and carpet beetles. Their larvae eat the protein in wool, silk and pashmina, and prefer fibre soiled with sweat or food, in dark, undisturbed places.
• Silverfish and cockroaches. They graze on starch, glue, paper and starched cotton.
• Termites. They eat wood, paper and cardboard, arriving from the ground and through walls, often inside mud tubes.
• Wood-boring beetles. Their larvae tunnel through timber, bamboo and cane; round exit holes and little heaps of fine powder, called frass, give them away.
• Rodents and dust. Mice shred yarn and paper for nests; dust abrades, holds moisture and feeds mould.

Yarn and fabric

Store fibre clean and dry, since moths go for soiled fibre. Lidded polypropylene boxes and heavy resealable bags keep insects out, but only if the contents are thoroughly dry, because sealed damp fibre goes mouldy; add a sachet of silica gel in humid months. Cotton bags breathe but will not stop a moth. Cedar, lavender and dried neem leaves may discourage adult insects, but they do not kill larvae already in the fibre. Avoid naphthalene mothballs: the vapour is toxic, naphthalene is classed as a possible human carcinogen, and it has no place in a home with children.

If you find moth damage, isolate the piece. Seal it in a bag with the air pressed out and freeze it in a domestic freezer at about −18 °C for at least a week, preferably two, then let it warm to room temperature still sealed, so that condensation forms on the bag and not on the fibre. Vacuum the storage space thoroughly. Sticky pheromone traps show whether moths are about; they do not solve the problem.

Timber

Store boards flat and supported along their length, never leaning, or they take a permanent bend. Stack them on level bearers well off the floor, with thin, dry stickers between the layers, evenly spaced and aligned one above another, so that air reaches every face. Seal the end grain of fresh boards with wax or paint to reduce end splits, and keep the stack under cover, out of rain and sun, with air moving. Bring timber into the workshop a few weeks before use, and keep anything showing fresh frass apart. Never leave timber on a bare ground floor through the monsoon, where damp rises and termites find it; a raised rack against an interior wall is far safer.

Clay

Plastic clay keeps a long time if it stays moist. Keep it double-bagged in heavy plastic with the air squeezed out, in a lidded bin out of the sun. Stiffened clay softens if wrapped in a damp cloth inside the bag for a few days. Mould on stored clay does the clay no harm, but people with allergies should wear gloves and a mask when wedging it.

Reclaiming turns scraps and failed pots back into usable clay.

1. Let the scraps dry completely and break them small; bone-dry clay slakes quickly, damp lumps do not.
2. Cover them with water and leave them overnight.
3. Pour off the clear water and stir the slurry.
4. Spread the slurry on a plaster slab or a cloth-covered board until it is stiff enough to handle.
5. Wedge thoroughly before use.

Keep each clay body separate, since a low-firing clay mixed into stoneware reclaim can melt in a high firing. Keep plaster crumbs out altogether: a speck of plaster in a fired pot can swell with moisture later and burst a flake from the surface.

Paper, chemicals and tools

Paper belongs flat, in its wrapper, in a drawer, plan chest or rigid folder, away from light and outside walls; store boards flat under a light weight. Handmade paper takes up moisture and cockles, so interleave it. Leather and bookcloth grow mould in a humid cupboard.

Dyes, glazes and chemicals stay in their original labelled containers, never in food or drink containers, in a lockable cupboard away from children, food and heat. Keep powders dry, stand liquids in a tray that would catch a leak, keep solvents in a closed metal box, file the safety data sheets, and ask your municipal authority how to dispose of unwanted chemicals rather than pouring them down a drain.

Tools rust when iron meets water and oxygen, and salt, from sea air or sweat, speeds it up. A fingerprint on a chisel in the monsoon can be a rust spot by morning.

• Wipe steel tools after use with a lightly oiled cloth; camellia oil and light machine oil both work, and paste wax protects plane soles.
• Remove light rust with fine abrasive paper and oil, watching especially the backs of chisels and plane irons near the edge.
• Keep silica gel, or a vapour corrosion inhibitor, in a closed tool chest.
• Store edges where nothing touches them: chisels in a rack or canvas roll, planes on their sides with blades retracted, saws with blade guards.
• Keep fabric scissors for fabric only, needles in a case, and used blades in a lidded tin.
• Clean lint from a sewing machine, oil it as its manual says, and keep it covered.

The Indian climate

Most care advice is written for temperate countries. Indian conditions are harder.

Monsoon. For three or four months across most of the country, and longer in parts of the south and north-east, RH stays above 70 per cent for weeks and often above 80. Mould grows, tools rust overnight, clay will not dry, glue cures slowly, and termites and silverfish are at their busiest. Coastal cities such as Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata stay humid much of the year, and salt air speeds rust and the tarnishing of metal thread. North Indian summers push top-floor rooms past 40 °C for weeks, softening wax and adhesives and splitting timber and cane, while dust storms drive grit into anything unsealed; the dry winters that follow shrink timber that swelled in the rains. Power cuts stop dehumidifiers, and air-conditioning switched off every night creates the daily swings that do harm.

What works:

• A digital hygrometer, roughly ₹300–1,500 (2026), kept where you store things. Check it now and then with a salt test: sealed in a small box with a damp paste of common salt for several hours, an accurate hygrometer reads close to 75 per cent.
• Silica gel inside closed boxes and cupboards. Choose the indicating kind, which changes colour as it saturates, and recharge it in an oven at the temperature its maker gives. Gel left uncharged through a monsoon does nothing.
• The right place: an interior wall, not one that takes the rain or the afternoon sun; off the floor; away from bathrooms and kitchens; not directly under the roof.
• Steel almirahs, which resist termites and rodents, lined with acid-free board or clean cotton and given silica gel, since they can gather condensation inside.
• Airing textiles and paper in the shade on dry days after rain, packed away again before the evening damp.
• Termite checks for mud tubes before and after the monsoon, with a professional pest controller called for any infestation.

Stage 13Preservation and Care: Finished Work and Its Records

Finished work faces the same enemies as raw materials, with one difference: it cannot be bought again.

Textiles

Folding and rolling. Every fold is a line of stress, and fibres bent in the same place for years crack along it; silk and metal thread such as zari suffer first. Where there is room, roll long flat pieces such as shawls, dupattas and phulkaris around a tube covered in acid-free tissue or washed cotton, interleaving tissue as you go, with the decorated face outwards so that it is stretched rather than crushed. Where a piece must be folded, as most saris are, pad each fold with a soft roll of acid-free tissue so that it curves instead of creasing, and refold along different lines every few months. Use unbuffered tissue for silk and wool, since the alkaline buffer in buffered tissue can harm protein fibres. Wrap silk and zari saris in soft washed cotton or muslin, not plastic, which traps moisture. Store knits folded flat, not on hangers.

Washing heirloom pieces. First test colour-fastness on a hidden spot by pressing a damp white cotton bud against it; if colour comes away, do not wash. Never wash at home anything with metal thread, old or weighted silk, painted or printed decoration that may run, or anything already weak or torn; take those to a textile conservator. A sound cotton or linen piece can be washed by hand in cool water with a little mild, pH-neutral detergent, supported on a towel so that it is never lifted wet by one end, rinsed, pressed between towels, never wrung, and dried flat in the shade. Hand-knits are washed the same way and eased into shape while damp.

Display. Natural dyes fade fast. Show textiles away from windows, in low light, and rotate them: a few months out, then a long rest in the dark. Hang them from a fabric sleeve stitched to the back, with a rod through it, never with pins or nails through the cloth.

Ceramics

Fired clay does not rot or feed insects, but it breaks. Lift pots by the body with both hands, never by a handle, rim or spout. Keep pieces back from shelf edges, and where shelves shake or children reach, fix them with museum putty or wax. Put paper or felt between stacked glazed plates and bowls. Do not leave unglazed earthenware standing in water, because salts drawn in and left behind as it dries can flake the surface. If a valued piece breaks, keep every fragment in a labelled bag; a conservator can do far more with clean fragments than with a hasty superglue repair.

Packing. Wrap the piece in tissue, then bubble wrap, fill hollows with crumpled paper, and pack it in a strong box with at least 5 cm of cushioning on every side, so that nothing moves when the box is shaken. For anything valuable, put that box inside a larger one with more cushioning all round.

Wood

Wooden pieces go on moving with the seasons. Keep them away from heaters, air-conditioner vents and direct sun, which dry one face faster than the other. A drawer that sticks in the monsoon should not be planed until the dry season, or it will rattle for the rest of the year. Dust with a soft dry cloth, renew an oil finish with a thin coat of the same oil when it looks dry, and wipe up water at once, especially on shellac. Avoid silicone polishes, which leave a residue that makes later repair difficult. Fresh frass or new exit holes mean live borers: freeze small pieces sealed in a bag, and call a professional for furniture or any sign of termites.

Bound books

Shelve books upright and supported, not leaning and not packed so tightly that pulling one out tears its spine; lay large, heavy books flat. Keep them off outside walls, out of sunlight and away from damp, which brings mould and foxing, the brown spotting of old paper. Handle them with clean, dry hands, since cotton gloves make pages harder to turn and easier to tear. Never leave rubber bands, clips or sticky notes on a book you mean to keep.

Records of your work

Records let you repeat a success, avoid repeating a failure, and show that the work is yours.

• A workbook entry for every piece: date; materials and sources; clay body, glaze batch, firing schedule and cone; yarn, dye lot, needles and tension; timber, moisture reading and finish; paper, grain and thread; hours; what went wrong; a photograph.
• Test tiles and swatches, numbered on the tile or tag itself and matched to the workbook.
• Patterns and designs kept flat in polyester sleeves, never PVC, with copies used at the bench.
• Photographs of each finished piece before it leaves you, front, back and maker's mark, with a scale.
• A maker's mark: a stamp in the clay, a sewn label, a signature cut into the wood.
• Digital copies in lasting formats, such as JPEG or TIFF for images and PDF, plain text or spreadsheet files for notes, kept under the 3-2-1 rule: three copies, on two kinds of storage, one of them kept somewhere else.

Disaster planning and conservators

On a ground floor in monsoon country, keep stock and finished work well above floor level. Kilns, oily rags and solvents raise the fire risk, so fit a smoke alarm and keep an extinguisher by the door. Keep a list and photographs of tools and valued work against theft, and decide in advance what you would save first: usually the records, then irreplaceable heirlooms, then tools. Household insurance may limit cover for tools, stock and valuable pieces, so read the policy.

Stop before you clean, wash, glue or treat anything old, valuable or fragile, whether an heirloom sari with metal thread, a mouldy textile, a broken old pot or a book whose pages are cracking, and find a conservator. In India, the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) runs conservation laboratories, and museums in the larger cities can often recommend one.

Stage 14From First Project to Good Work

Every maker knows the gap between what they can see is good and what their hands can make. Taste improves faster than skill, so for a long time your own work disappoints you. That disappointment is not a signal to stop. It is a sign that your eye is working.

Make the same thing many times

The fastest way across the gap is repetition with attention. Throw fifty cylinders before a teapot. Sew ten bags before a jacket. Cut twenty dovetails in scrap before a box. Bind a dozen pamphlets before a case binding. Each repeat isolates a problem, and each problem solved stays solved. A new project every time feels more interesting and teaches much less.

Keep the failures for a while and look at them beside later work. Photograph each attempt. The workbook from Stage 13 turns vague progress into something you can see.

Get other eyes on it

Nobody sees their own faults clearly. A teacher who watches your hands for five minutes will find what a year of video could not. Take a class, join a studio, a guild or a knitting circle, and ask for criticism rather than praise. In India, many master artisans teach short courses and craft organisations run workshops (see Stage 23). Learning from a hereditary craftsperson is a privilege, so pay properly for their time.

Buy tools when the work asks

Add a tool when a real project cannot go on without it, and then buy the best you can reasonably afford. A drawer of unused gadgets is a common and expensive way of avoiding practice.

Look after your body

The long hours that build skill also build strain: sore wrists and necks for knitters and embroiderers, sore backs for throwers, sore shoulders for woodworkers. Change position, take breaks, and see a doctor or physiotherapist about pain that persists (see Stage 4).

Stage 15Selling Your Work Fairly

Selling changes a hobby. It brings deadlines, customers and accounts, and also the satisfaction of a stranger choosing your work and paying for it. A fair price is fair to both sides: it pays the maker properly, and it tells the buyer the truth about what they are getting.

When to start

Start when you can make the same thing well, repeatedly, and can say what it is made of and how to care for it. Friends' praise is kind, but it is not a market. A table at a local market or an open studio is a better first test than an online shop.

Pricing

Most beginners underprice, which is unfair to themselves and to every other maker in the same market. Build a price from its parts:

1. Materials, including waste and breakage.
2. Labour: realistic hours, including preparation, finishing and failures, at an hourly rate you would accept for skilled work.
3. Overheads: studio and firing fees, electricity, tool wear, packaging, photography, stall fees and platform commissions.
4. Margin, so that something is left to invest.

That total is a wholesale price, for a shop that buys outright. Shops add their own margin, often roughly doubling it, and shops that sell on consignment keep a substantial commission. If you sell direct far below a shop's price, shops will not stock you, so set your own retail price with that in mind.

Tell the truth

• Handmade should mean made by hand. A bought blank that you decorate is hand-decorated; say so.
• Describe materials exactly: "pure silk" only if it is, "natural dyes" only if no synthetic dye was used.
• Never use a Geographical Indication name, such as Kancheepuram silk or Lucknow chikan, for work not made in that place by an authorised producer (see Stage 22), and never call a machine-made textile "handloom".
• Say whether a pot is food-safe or decorative only, and have tableware glazes tested before selling (see Stage 10).
• Give care instructions with every piece.

Patterns, tax and rules

If you sell pieces made from someone else's knitting, sewing or embroidery pattern, check its terms; many designers allow small-scale sales and some do not. Do not copy another maker's designs, and credit the communities whose traditional motifs you draw on.

Selling regularly makes you a business. In India that brings income-tax obligations, and GST registration has turnover thresholds and particular rules for sellers on online marketplaces, which change from time to time. Toys and other products for children must meet safety standards and certification rules. Speak to a chartered accountant as sales grow, and check the current rules before selling toys.

Stage 16A Craft Civilisation

Few countries have as many living craft traditions as India, or as many people who still earn a living by them. Weaving, printing, embroidery, pottery, carving and basketry are not museum subjects here. They are practised in homes and workshops across the country, often by families who have done the same work for generations.

Beginnings

The cities of the Indus civilisation, more than four thousand years ago, made wheel-thrown painted pottery and carnelian beads drilled with such skill that they were traded as far as Mesopotamia. Fragments of cotton cloth found at Mohenjo-daro are among the earliest evidence of cotton textiles anywhere. Cotton was to become India's great gift to the world's wardrobes.

For most of recorded history, craft knowledge passed within families and communities, many of them tied to caste occupations: potters, weavers, printers, carpenters. That system kept extraordinary skills alive for centuries, and it also bound people to work that society often treated as lowly. Both facts belong in an honest account. Temples, kings and merchants were the great patrons, and the Mughal emperors ran imperial workshops, karkhanas, that gathered makers from across their empire and beyond.

Cloth for the world

Indian cotton was traded across the Indian Ocean from ancient times. From the seventeenth century, European trading companies shipped Indian textiles to Europe in huge quantities, and their names entered European languages: calico from Calicut, chintz from the Hindi chheent, for spotted or printed cloth, and the fine muslins of Bengal. Indian printed cottons became so fashionable in England that Parliament restricted their import and use in the early eighteenth century to protect English weavers.

Decline and defiance

The Industrial Revolution reversed the flow. In the nineteenth century machine-made cloth from British mills poured into Indian markets, and hand-spinners and many weavers lost their livelihoods, though historians debate how fast and how completely. After the partition of Bengal in 1905, the Swadeshi movement made boycotting foreign cloth a political act. Mahatma Gandhi then made khadi, hand-spun and hand-woven cloth, and the spinning wheel, the charkha, emblems of the freedom movement: a way for anyone to take part, and a statement that self-rule began with self-reliance. The charkha stood at the centre of the Indian National Congress flag before the Ashoka Chakra took its place on the national flag.

Revival

After 1947 a determined group set out to rebuild India's crafts. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay chaired the All India Handicrafts Board set up in the early 1950s, founded the Crafts Council of India, and helped create the cooperatives and emporia through which craftspeople could reach buyers. Pupul Jayakar championed handlooms and handicrafts for decades and in the 1980s led the Festivals of India that took Indian craft to audiences abroad. Government offices for handlooms and handicrafts, weavers' service centres, craft museums and design schools followed.

Today craft sits where heritage, livelihood and fashion meet. Designers work with weavers and printers, cooperatives and non-profits sell directly, and online shops reach every city. The pressures are just as real: powerloom and screen-printed imitations, cheap imports, costly silk and silver, and young people leaving family crafts for steadier work. Where buyers spend their money matters (see Stage 23).

Stage 17Handloom: Banarasi, Kanjeevaram and Pochampally

A handloom is a loom worked by human power: the weaver's hands send the shuttle across and the weaver's feet work the treadles, whether on a pit loom, a frame loom or a backstrap loom. A powerloom is driven by a motor. The difference is not only romantic. Handloom cloth has a slight irregularity, a softness and a density of pattern that powerlooms rarely match, and handloom weaving still supports a very large number of families. Indian law reserves certain items for handloom production, and the government certifies genuine handloom goods through the Handloom Mark and the India Handloom Brand. National Handloom Day, on 7 August, recalls the launch of the Swadeshi movement on that date in 1905.

Banarasi

The silk brocades of Varanasi are woven with zari, metallic thread, in dense floral and foliate patterns, many descended from Mughal designs. The motifs are made with extra weft threads. In the demanding kadhua technique each motif is woven separately with its own weft, so the reverse is neat; in the quicker phekua method the extra weft runs across the whole width and the loose floats are cut away at the back. Varieties include plain katan silk, sheer kora or organza with zari, and tanchoi, with small, dense, many-coloured patterns woven into the silk itself.

Kanjeevaram

The silk saris of Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu are heavy, lustrous and made to last generations. They are woven from thick mulberry silk, with zari in the finest pieces made from silver thread coated with gold. The body and a contrasting border are woven with separate weft threads that interlock where they meet, a technique called korvai, so that the contrast is woven in rather than attached; a contrasting pallu, the decorated end, can be joined in a similar way. Temple-tower borders, checks, peacocks, parrots and the mythical swan are traditional motifs.

Pochampally ikat

In ikat the pattern is dyed into the yarn before weaving. Bundles of warp or weft threads are tied tightly at planned points, dyed, retied and dyed again, and when the yarns are set up on the loom the pattern emerges with the soft, feathered edges that mark the technique. Pochampally, in Telangana, is known for bold geometric ikat in cotton and silk, both single ikat, where either warp or weft is tied, and the far harder double ikat, where both are tied and must meet exactly as the cloth is woven. India's other great ikats include the double-ikat patola of Patan in Gujarat, of which a single sari takes months, and the bandha of Sambalpur in Odisha.

Many other weaves deserve a visit: Chanderi and Maheshwari from Madhya Pradesh, jamdani from Bengal, Paithani from Maharashtra, the golden muga silk of Assam, and the pashmina and kani shawls of Kashmir.

Stage 18Block Printing: Bagru, Sanganer and Ajrakh

Hand block printing is simple to describe and very hard to do well. A design is carved in relief on a wooden block. The printer presses the block into a tray of dye or paste, sets it on cloth stretched over a padded table and strikes it with the heel of the hand, then moves along and does it again, hundreds of times, lining each impression up so exactly with the last that the joins disappear.

Blocks and printers

A design in several colours needs a set of blocks, an outline block and a block for each filling colour, each carved to register exactly with the others. Blocks are carved from close-grained hardwood by specialist carvers, a craft in its own right, with well-known centres such as Pethapur in Gujarat. In Rajasthan, hand printing has long been the work of the Chhipa community, and in Kutch and Sindh of the Khatri community.

There are two basic methods. In direct printing, colour or mordant is printed straight onto the cloth. In resist printing, a paste is printed to keep dye away from parts of the cloth, which is then dyed and washed.

Bagru

The village of Bagru, near Jaipur, is known for earthy colours and a traditional sequence of natural dyes. Cloth is soaked in a solution of myrobalan, harda, which leaves a pale yellow ground rich in tannin. A black made by fermenting scrap iron with jaggery, syahi, reacts with that tannin where it is printed, and an alum-based mordant printed where red is wanted takes its colour in a later dye bath. Bagru is also known for dabu, a mud resist paste of clay mixed with lime, gum and other binders. The printed paste is dusted with sawdust to set it, and the cloth is dipped in indigo; where the mud sat, the cloth stays pale, often with fine crackle lines.

Sanganer

Sanganer, now part of greater Jaipur, is known for lighter work: fine outlines and delicate floral sprays and trellises on white or pale grounds. It is also a long-established centre of handmade paper. In both towns much printing now uses synthetic dyes and screens alongside hand blocks, and, as in many printing towns, effluent from dyeing has become a serious environmental concern.

Ajrakh

Ajrakh is a resist-printed and dyed cloth of Sindh, of Kutch in Gujarat and of Barmer in Rajasthan, with dense, symmetrical geometric designs in deep indigo and madder red, with black and white. Its making takes many stages over days or weeks: repeated printing of resists and mordants, dyeing in indigo and red, and washing between stages, traditionally on both faces of the cloth. The name is often said to come from azrak, Arabic for blue. Long worn by pastoral and farming communities as shoulder cloths, turbans and wraps, ajrakh has in recent decades found a large new market in fashion and furnishings.

Stage 19Embroidery: Chikankari, Phulkari and Kantha

India's embroidery traditions are among the richest anywhere, and most of them were, and still are, the work of women, often done at home between other tasks.

Chikankari

Chikankari, the white embroidery of Lucknow, was traditionally worked in white thread on fine white cotton muslin, and its beauty lies in texture and shadow rather than colour. The design is first printed onto the cloth with carved wooden blocks in an ink that washes out. Embroiderers then work a vocabulary of named stitches: bakhia, shadow work stitched on the reverse so that the thread shows through the fine fabric as a soft shadow; phanda and murri, tiny raised knots; and jaali, open net-like patterns made by easing threads apart rather than cutting them. Finally the piece is washed to remove the ink. Today chikankari appears in every colour and on many fabrics, and much of the market is machine-made imitation.

Phulkari

Phulkari, "flower work", comes from Punjab, on both sides of today's border. It is worked in darning stitch from the reverse of the cloth, with untwisted silk floss called pat, on hand-spun, hand-woven cotton traditionally dyed rust, red or indigo. Because the long straight stitches catch the light differently according to their direction, a single colour of floss can shimmer in several tones. When the embroidery covers the whole ground so that the cloth disappears, the piece is a bagh, a garden. Phulkaris and baghs were made by the women of a family, sometimes over years, and given at weddings and births. Most phulkari sold today is machine-made or worked in rayon on synthetic cloth; an old bagh is a textile of real value that needs careful storage (see Stage 13).

Kantha

Kantha comes from Bengal, today West Bengal and Bangladesh. Women layered worn saris and dhotis and stitched them together with running stitch into quilts, wraps and covers, sometimes drawing coloured threads from the old sari borders. The rippling lines of stitches give kantha its texture. Figurative nakshi kantha carry lotuses, fish, trees, animals, scenes of daily life and stories, and are among the most personal textiles in India. Today "kantha" also names running-stitch decoration on new silk saris and stoles.

Much hand embroidery is still done by women working at home on piece rates through contractors, often for very little. Buying from cooperatives and organisations that pay embroiderers directly makes a real difference (see Stage 23).

Stage 20Clay in India: The Village Potter, Blue Pottery and Khurja

India's potters work at every scale, from the village kumhar making water pots on a wheel spun with a stick, to industrial ceramic towns, to studio potters working in the international tradition.

The village potter

In much of rural India the traditional wheel is a heavy disc on a pivot set close to the ground. The potter spins it with a stick pushed into a notch near the rim and throws while the momentum lasts, often making many small pots from one large lump of clay, off the hump. Larger pots are often thrown thick and then thinned and enlarged by beating, with a wooden paddle outside against a smooth anvil held inside. The ware is usually low-fired earthenware, fired in simple kilns or open firings fuelled with wood, dung cakes and straw.

That work makes objects of daily life: the matka that cools drinking water, cooking pots, kulhads for tea, and the diyas lit in their millions at Diwali. Terracotta reaches monumental scale in the great clay horses offered to the guardian deity Aiyanar in Tamil Nadu, and appears in the stylised Bankura horses of West Bengal and the painted votive plaques of Molela in Rajasthan. In Manipur, the Tangkhul Naga potters of Longpi make black cooking pots and serving dishes from a paste of ground stone and clay, shaped by hand without a wheel and polished with leaves after firing.

Jaipur blue pottery

Blue pottery from Jaipur is barely clay at all. Its body is a mixture of ground quartz, powdered glass, fuller's earth (multani mitti), borax and gum, pressed into moulds rather than thrown. It is painted in cobalt blue and copper turquoise, glazed and fired at a low temperature, which leaves it bright but fragile. The craft has Persian and Central Asian roots and is usually said to have reached Jaipur under royal patronage in the nineteenth century. By the mid-twentieth century it had almost died out, and its revival is widely credited to the artist Kripal Singh Shekhawat, encouraged by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay among others. Treat blue pottery as decorative unless the maker confirms that a piece is suitable for food.

Khurja

Khurja, in Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh, is one of India's best-known pottery towns, with a large cluster of units making glazed ceramics, from hand-painted decorative ware and planters to everyday tableware. Much of its output is now industrial or semi-industrial, so a visitor can see the whole range, from the wheel to the production line.

Studio pottery

India also has a lively studio pottery movement. Gurcharan Singh, founder of the Delhi Blue Pottery Trust, is often called its pioneer, and Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry, set up by Ray Meeker and Deborah Smith, has trained many Indian studio potters in high-fired stoneware.

Stage 21Wood, Bamboo, Cane and Paper

Carving and turning

Indian wood carving ranges from the temple chariots and carved house fronts of the south to the lattice windows and doors of Rajasthan and Gujarat.

• Kashmir is known for deep carving in walnut wood, with chinar leaves, vines and flowers, on boxes, screens and furniture.
• Saharanpur, in Uttar Pradesh, is a major centre of carved sheesham furniture and woodware.
• Mysuru is known for rosewood inlay, and Karnataka for sandalwood carving, a material whose trade is regulated.
• Channapatna, in Karnataka, makes turned wooden toys, traditionally from a light local wood known as ivory-wood. Their colour comes from sticks of lac held against the piece as it spins on the lathe, the heat of friction melting the lac onto the surface.
• Kondapalli, in Andhra Pradesh, carves painted toys and figures from a light, soft local wood, and Etikoppaka, in the same state, makes lacquered turned toys coloured with natural dyes.

Bamboo and cane in the north-east

In the north-eastern states bamboo and cane are the materials of daily life: houses, floors, fences, fish traps, baskets, mats, hats, furniture and musical instruments. Bamboo is a giant grass that grows very fast and can be cut without killing the plant. Cane, or rattan, is the stem of a climbing palm, solid and flexible, used whole for frames and split for binding and weaving.

Makers split bamboo into strips and slivers of remarkable fineness and weave them in plain, twill and open hexagonal patterns. Assam's japi, a broad conical hat, and the fine basketry and mats of Tripura are well-known examples. Traditional practice protects bamboo from boring insects by cutting it in the drier months, soaking the cut stems in water to leach out the starch that attracts insects, and storing finished work above the kitchen hearth, where smoke discourages them.

Caring for bamboo and cane at home. Keep pieces out of direct sun, which dries and splits them. Give them air in the monsoon, when mould grows. Wipe them with a damp cloth rather than soaking them, and watch for pinholes and fine powder, the signs of borers (see Stage 12).

Paper

India's paper traditions deserve a place too. Sanganer, near Jaipur, is a long-established centre of handmade paper, much of it made from cotton rag, and the Kumarappa National Handmade Paper Institute in Jaipur works to support the craft. Kashmir's papier-mâché, moulded or layered paper painted with fine floral designs and lacquered, is sold across the world.

Stage 22Geographical Indication: What the Tag Protects

A Geographical Indication, or GI, is a name or sign used on goods that come from a particular place and owe their qualities or reputation to that origin. Champagne and Roquefort are famous examples abroad. In India, Darjeeling tea was the first product registered, and many of the country's best-known crafts have followed.

The law

Members of the World Trade Organization must protect geographical indications under the agreement on the trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, known as TRIPS. India's law is the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999, which came into force in 2003. Registrations are handled by the Geographical Indications Registry in Chennai.

• An application is made by an association of producers, or an organisation or authority representing their interests, not by a single business.
• It defines the product, the geographical area, and what makes the product distinctive, including how it is made.
• Once the GI is registered, producers in the area can register as authorised users.
• A registration lasts ten years and can be renewed.
• Using a registered GI on goods that do not come from the area, or in a way that misleads buyers about origin, is an infringement.

Some craft GIs

Among the craft names registered as Geographical Indications are those below. Registered names differ slightly from everyday usage, and registrations must be renewed, so check the registry's current records before relying on a status.

What a GI does and does not do

A GI protects a name, not a technique. Anyone may learn to weave ikat or print with blocks; what they may not do is sell their work as Pochampally ikat or Bagru print if it was not made there by an authorised producer. A GI does not guarantee the quality of each piece, and it does not by itself bring buyers or fair prices. Enforcement in busy markets is difficult, and imitations sold under famous names remain common. For a buyer, the tag is most useful as a question: is this seller an authorised user, or buying from one, and can they show it?

Stage 23Craft Bodies, Markets and Buying Ethically

India's crafts are supported by a thick web of government offices, non-profit organisations, museums and markets. Knowing a few of them helps a maker find teachers and a buyer find the people who make the work.

Public bodies

• Under the Ministry of Textiles, the Office of the Development Commissioner (Handicrafts) and the Office of the Development Commissioner (Handlooms) run schemes, training, marketing support and awards, including the Shilp Guru and National Awards for master craftspeople.
• The Khadi and Village Industries Commission promotes khadi and village industries and runs Khadi India outlets.
• The Central Silk Board supports silk production and set up the Silk Mark scheme.
• Weavers' Service Centres give design and technical support to handloom weavers.
• State corporations run emporia such as Rajasthali in Rajasthan, Poompuhar in Tamil Nadu, Cauvery in Karnataka, Gurjari in Gujarat and Kairali in Kerala, and the Central Cottage Industries Emporium in New Delhi sells work from across the country.

Non-profit organisations

• The Crafts Council of India, founded by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, works with state crafts councils for craftspeople's welfare and recognition.
• Dastkar, based in Delhi, supports craftspeople and runs bazaars, including its Nature Bazaar.
• SEWA, the Self Employed Women's Association, founded in Ahmedabad, organises women workers, many of them embroiderers and other artisans.
• In Kutch, Kala Raksha, Khamir, Shrujan and Somaiya Kala Vidya work with embroiderers, weavers and printers on livelihoods, design education and documentation.

Museums, markets and fairs

The National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, known as the Crafts Museum, in New Delhi, and the Calico Museum of Textiles in Ahmedabad, one of the world's great textile collections, are essential visits; the Calico Museum's visiting arrangements are restricted, so check before going. DakshinaChitra, near Chennai, is a living museum of south Indian crafts and architecture, and Shilpgram, near Udaipur, is a crafts village with an annual festival.

Dilli Haat in New Delhi gives craftspeople from across India stalls on rotation to sell their own work. The Surajkund International Crafts Mela in Faridabad, Haryana, usually held in February, is among the largest crafts fairs in the country. State craft fairs, bazaars and local haats and melas bring makers and buyers face to face, and many weaving and printing clusters welcome visitors who arrange ahead.

Buying ethically

1. Buy as close to the maker as you can: from the artisan, a cooperative, or an organisation that pays makers fairly and openly.
2. Ask who made it, where, and how long it took. Good sellers know, and are proud to tell.
3. Pay the price. Modest bargaining is customary at many fairs, but grinding a master down comes straight out of their wages. At fixed-price cooperatives, do not bargain.
4. Look for the marks where they apply: Silk Mark, Handloom Mark, India Handloom Brand, khadi certification, and GI authorised users (see Stages 17 and 22).
5. Refuse illegal materials. The Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 prohibits trade in ivory and in shahtoosh, the wool of the protected Tibetan antelope, among many other wildlife products. If a seller is vague about a material, do not buy.
6. Take care with old pieces. Objects more than a hundred years old can be antiquities under the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972, which restricts their export.
7. Respect the design. Traditional patterns belong to living communities. If they inspire your own work, say so, and never sell a copy as the original.

Glossary

A

Acid dye — A dye for protein fibres such as wool and silk, and for nylon. [8]

Acid-free — Paper, board or tissue made neutral so that it does not yellow and weaken with age. [11]

Ajrakh — Resist-printed and dyed cloth of Sindh, Kutch and Barmer, in indigo, red, black and white. [18]

Alum — The commonest mordant; also used to prepare paper for marbling. [8]

Authorised user — A producer registered to use a Geographical Indication. [22]

B

Backstrap loom — A simple loom tensioned by a strap around the weaver's body. [8]

Bagh — A phulkari embroidered so densely that the ground cloth is hidden. [19]

Bakhia — Chikankari shadow work, stitched on the reverse of sheer cloth. [19]

Bandhani — Indian tie-resist dyeing, in which tiny points of cloth are bound before dyeing. [8]

Bias — The diagonal of a woven fabric, at 45 degrees to the warp, which stretches. [7]

Bisque — The first, lower firing that hardens pots before glazing. [10]

Bone-dry — Clay that has lost its free water and is ready to fire. [9]

Buffered — Containing an alkaline reserve to neutralise acids. Unbuffered acid-free tissue is preferred for silk and wool. [11]

C

Case binding — The hardback binding, with sewn sections fixed into a cover of boards. [11]

Centring — Forcing clay to run true at the centre of the wheel before throwing. [9]

Charkha — The spinning wheel, emblem of the khadi movement. [16]

Chikankari — The white-on-white embroidery of Lucknow. [19]

Clay body — A blend of clays and minerals made for a purpose and a firing range. [9]

Crazing — A network of fine cracks in a glaze. [10]

D

Dabu — A mud resist paste printed on cloth before dyeing, notably at Bagru. [18]

Dye lot — A batch of yarn dyed together; two lots of one colour can differ. [8]

E

Earthenware — Pottery fired at lower temperatures, porous unless glazed. [9]

Equilibrium moisture content — The moisture level at which wood neither gains nor loses water in the surrounding air. [5]

F

Fibre-reactive dye — A dye that bonds chemically with cellulose fibres such as cotton. [8]

Flat-sawn — Timber sawn with the growth rings running across its face; prone to cupping. [5]

Flux — The glaze ingredient that lowers the melting point of silica. [10]

Foxing — Brown spotting on old paper, encouraged by damp. [13]

Frass — Fine powder left by wood-boring insects. [12]

G

Geographical Indication — A name for goods whose qualities or reputation come from their place of origin; GI for short. [22]

Grain — The direction of the fibres in wood, woven fabric or machine-made paper. [5]

Greenware — Unfired pottery at any stage of drying. [9]

Grog — Fired clay ground to grit and added to clay bodies. [9]

H

Handloom — A loom worked by human power, as against a motor-driven powerloom; also the cloth woven on it. [17]

Harda — Myrobalan, a tannin-rich fruit used to prepare cotton for printing and dyeing. [18]

Hardwood — Timber from a broadleaved tree, whatever its actual hardness. Softwood comes from conifers. [5]

Hygrometer — An instrument that measures relative humidity. [12]

Hygroscopic — Taking up moisture from the air and giving it back. [5]

I

Ikat — Resist dyeing of yarn before weaving; single ikat ties warp or weft, double ikat ties both. [17]

J

Jacquard — A loom mechanism that lifts warp threads in sequences set by punched cards. [8]

K

Kadhua — Banarasi technique in which each motif is woven separately with its own weft. [17]

Kantha — Layered cloth of Bengal quilted and decorated with running stitch. [19]

Karkhana — A court workshop, as under the Mughals. [16]

Khadi — Hand-spun, hand-woven cloth. [16]

Korvai — Kanchipuram technique in which the wefts of body and border interlock where they meet. [17]

Kumhar — A potter, especially a village potter. [20]

L

Leather-hard — Clay firm enough to handle, carve and trim, but still damp. [9]

Lignin — The substance in wood pulp that makes paper yellow and brittle. [11]

M

Matka — A porous earthenware water pot. [20]

Mordant — A metal salt that fixes a dye to fibre. [8]

Mortise and tenon — A joint in which a tongue, the tenon, fits a closely cut hole, the mortise. [6]

O

Oxidation — Firing with plenty of oxygen, as in an electric kiln. [10]

P

Phulkari — Punjabi darning-stitch embroidery in untwisted silk floss. [19]

Pyrometric cone — A slender ceramic pyramid that bends after a set amount of heat, used to judge a firing. [10]

Q

Quarter-sawn — Timber sawn with the growth rings upright on its face; more stable than flat-sawn. [5]

R

Reclaiming — Turning clay scraps and failed pots back into usable clay. [12]

Reduction — Firing starved of oxygen, which changes the colours of clay and glaze. [10]

Relative humidity — The moisture in air as a percentage of what it could hold at that temperature; RH for short. [12]

Resist dyeing — Keeping dye from parts of cloth or yarn by tying, stitching, wax or paste. [8]

S

Scoring and slipping — Scratching clay surfaces and brushing on slip, clay mixed with water, before joining them. [9]

Seasoning — The controlled drying of timber. [5]

Section — A group of sheets folded together, the unit of a sewn book; also called a signature. [11]

Selvedge — The finished lengthwise edge of woven cloth. [7]

Shellac — A wood finish made from lac, the resin of a scale insect. [6]

Silica gel — A drying agent that absorbs moisture and can be recharged by heating. [12]

Stickers — Thin spacers laid between boards in a timber stack. [12]

Stoneware — Pottery fired to a dense, vitrified body at high temperature. [9]

Swadeshi — The movement for Indian-made goods and against foreign cloth. [16]

T

Tension — In knitting and crochet, the number of stitches and rows in 10 cm; also called gauge. [8]

V

Vitrification — The partial melting that makes a fired clay body dense and glassy. [10]

W

Warp — The lengthwise threads of woven cloth, held under tension on the loom; the crosswise threads are the weft. [7]

Wedging — Kneading clay to remove air and even out its moisture. [9]

Z

Zari — Metallic thread for weaving and embroidery, graded as real, tested or imitation. [17]

Further Reading and Organisations

Craft in general

• David Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship (1968). The source of the workmanship of risk and of certainty.
• Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (2008). A sociologist on skill and the hand.
• Soetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman, adapted by Bernard Leach (1972). The mingei argument.
• Monona Rossol, The Artist's Complete Health and Safety Guide. The hazards of art and craft materials.

Wood

• R. Bruce Hoadley, Understanding Wood. Wood science for makers.
• Aldren A. Watson, Hand Tools: Their Ways and Workings.

Textiles

• Jenny Dean, Wild Colour. Natural dyeing.
• Elizabeth Zimmermann, Knitting Without Tears.

Clay

• Bernard Leach, A Potter's Book (1940).
• Daniel Rhodes, Clay and Glazes for the Potter.

Paper

• Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft.
• Keith A. Smith, Non-Adhesive Binding.
• Douglas Cockerell, Bookbinding, and the Care of Books (1901).

India

• Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Handicrafts of India.
• Jasleen Dhamija, Indian Folk Arts and Crafts.
• Pupul Jayakar, The Earthen Drum.
• Aditi Ranjan and M. P. Ranjan, editors, Handmade in India. A large survey of Indian crafts by region.
• John Gillow and Nicholas Barnard, Indian Textiles.
• Rosemary Crill, Indian Embroidery.
• Rta Kapur Chishti, Saris: Tradition and Beyond.
• Eiluned Edwards, Textiles and Dress of Gujarat.
• Judy Frater, Threads of Identity, on Rabari embroidery in Kutch.

Organisations and institutions

• Office of the Development Commissioner (Handicrafts), Ministry of Textiles.
• Office of the Development Commissioner (Handlooms), Ministry of Textiles, with its Weavers' Service Centres.
• Khadi and Village Industries Commission.
• Central Silk Board, and the Silk Mark Organisation of India.
• Geographical Indications Registry, Chennai.
• Crafts Council of India, and the state crafts councils.
• Dastkar, New Delhi.
• SEWA, the Self Employed Women's Association, Ahmedabad.
• Kala Raksha, Khamir, Shrujan and Somaiya Kala Vidya, in Kutch.
• Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).
• National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum (the Crafts Museum), New Delhi.
• Calico Museum of Textiles, Ahmedabad.
• DakshinaChitra, near Chennai.
• Kumarappa National Handmade Paper Institute, Jaipur.
• National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design, Jaipur.
• World Crafts Council, the international network of national crafts councils.

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