Sunita came to printing through her family — her mother and aunt are also printers in the same workshop, though both have moved into supervisory work as they've aged. Sunita continues to print every day, primarily on geometric and stripe motifs. Her work is in our Geometric collection and across most of our cushion cover line.
Block printing in Rajasthan has long included women, though they're often less visible in the public-facing version of the craft. Sunita is one of about forty women working in the Sanganer workshop. Most of them, like her, are second- or third-generation printers. The work moves between hands across the day — block, dye, stretch the cloth, press, lift, move, press again — and women have been doing this work for as long as the craft has existed.
She is the fastest of our regular printers. On a single-colour Buti or Geometric run, she can complete a king-size sheet in roughly eight hours, which is faster than most printers manage. Her press is light, fast, and consistent. She tends to do longer batches because of this — bolts of fabric where the rhythm of her work suits long, even runs.
When asked what she thinks about while printing, Sunita says — through her supervisor who also translated for us — that she mostly thinks about the work. The block, the dye, the next press. That's al