Ramesh works at the printing table six days a week, starting around eight in the morning and finishing around five in the afternoon. He has done this work for twenty-two years. His grandfather was a block printer in the same workshop. His father was a block printer in the same workshop. He is a third-generation printer in the same building.

He prints across most of our motif library, but he is best known among the workshop for fine Buti work. Buti — small repeating motifs, often in single colour — is the most demanding kind of printing because the eye picks up small irregularities in dense, repeating patterns more easily than in larger ones. Ramesh's Buti prints are noticeably even across long lengths of cloth, the kind of evenness that comes from years of doing the same motion correctly.

He doesn't work alone — block printing is rarely solo work — but on most of his Buti pieces, he prints the entire bolt himself rather than splitting work with another karigar. This is partly preference and partly because his press depth is consistent in a way that's hard to match across two printers.

When asked about his work, Ramesh says little. The thing he says most often is that the work changes slowly — that a block printed today looks much the same as one printed forty years ago, when his grandfather was at the same table.