Block printing in Sanganer and Bagru is not a solo craft. A finished piece — say, a king-size cotton bedsheet — passes through several pairs of hands before it ships. The block carver, who carved the wooden block years before any of us bought it. The dyer, who mixed the colour that morning. The printer, the karigar who pressed the block against the cloth, several thousand times, over the course of a working day. The washer, who set the dye after printing. The finisher, who hemmed and folded.

Most of the people we name on this page are printers — the karigars whose hands you would see if you walked into the workshop on a printing day. We name them because they should be named. In most of the textile export industry, the people who actually make the work are anonymous. Their names don't appear on the cloth, on the label, on the invoice, or on the website. We disagree with that. Their hands made it.

We can't always trace every piece to a specific named printer — sometimes a batch is printed across two or three karigars working the same block. When we can trace it, we tell you who made it. When we can't, we say so honestly.

What follows are the karigars we work with most often, in their own words where possible, photographed at work.