Hand Block Printing Services: The Traditional Work from 1,000s of Years

Quick answer: Bagru, a small town near Jaipur, is one of Rajasthan's most important hand block printing centres, best known for "dabu" mud-resist printing and natural indigo dyeing. The craft is believed to date back roughly 450 years to when a Chhipa printer community settled on the banks of the Sanjariya river, whose mineral-rich mud and water became key ingredients in the printing process still used today. You can see this heritage reflected directly in our Bagru print sarees.

Bagru: One of Rajasthan's Oldest Printing Centres

The climate and soil around Bagru have long suited traditional textile printing. The town is particularly known for "dabu" prints, made using a mud-resist paste mixed with ingredients like wheat husk and lime, applied to the fabric before dyeing so that the resist areas stay undyed — a technique that shares its resist-dye logic with Ajrakh printing from further west. The fabric is then dried in open sunlight before being ready for its final colour treatment. While synthetic dyes are used for some modern colour combinations, many printers in Bagru still practise natural dyeing, with indigo remaining the town's signature hue. The Chhipa Mohalla neighbourhood is considered the centre of hand printing in Bagru, where freshly dyed fabric can often be seen drying on rooftop terraces.

The History of Bagru Print

There is no single definitive record of when block printing began in Bagru, but historians estimate the craft arrived roughly 450 years ago, when a Chhipa printer community from Sawai Madhopur settled along the banks of the Sanjariya river. The river's banks supplied the mineral-rich mud central to Bagru's base-colour dyeing process, and it remains a defining ingredient of the craft to this day. Traditional base colours in Bagru printing include ivory, yellow, beige, natural, orange, black, and maroon — black achieved using an iron-and-water mixture, red using alum, and maroon from a blend of red and tan pigments.

What was once a quiet town along the Jaipur-Ajmer road has since become a hub for design studios and fashion buyers, known not for palaces or forts but for its wooden block printing tradition. You can see this heritage reflected today in our hand block printed sarees, many of which carry the same Bagru-style motifs and colour palette. For a broader look at why the wider Jaipur region became such a major hub, see our post on why Jaipur is the hand block printing capital of India.

Bagru vs Sanganeri: Two Neighbouring Styles

Bagru is often discussed alongside Sanganer, another Rajasthan town roughly 30 kilometres from Jaipur with its own distinct hand block printing style. The two are easy to compare directly in our own catalogue, side by side:

Natural Indigo Dyeing

India has long been recognised as a pioneer of natural dyeing and colour printing, and indigo dyeing in particular puzzled many early foreign visitors, since the fabric shows no visible colour while submerged — the blue only develops once the cloth is exposed to open air. Hand block printing, including Bagru's distinctive style, has been recognised as a craft heritage across India for centuries, and its practitioners continue that tradition today. This same natural-dye process is used in producing our hand block printed salwar suits. To see the tools and materials behind every stage of this process, read our guide to block printing supplies.

The Natural Dyes Behind Bagru's Palette

Bagru's printing tradition remains almost entirely eco-friendly, using natural colouring agents including alum, turmeric, pomegranate rind, dried flowers, and indigo, which together produce the range of earthy, natural tones the region is known for. If you'd like to compare this hand-dyed approach against faster, industrial methods, see our post on hand block print vs screen print. For wholesale enquiries about Bagru and Sanganeri print sarees, reach out through our contact page.