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This time we were on a holiday road journey to Junagadh in December

Another road journey, another story, this time we were on a holiday road journey to Junagadh in December. i had planned to visit Rajkot patola centres but things do not always work as planned. Due to some reasons I could not visit these centres in Rajkot, feeling disappointed and dejected our driver came to my rescue. he informed us we would get to see some good Bandhani work in a place called Jetpur which was again enroute.
Jetpur turned out to be a place where there were hundreds of screen printing units as well as Bandhani units. Semi stitched suits with machine embroidery, all in medium to low range are made here. This whole town is involved in this business. traders from all over India come here to buy dress materials and sarees.
So, I decided to visit a screen printing and a Bandhani unit in Jetpur.
The screen printing unit that I visited was owned by a person from Calcutta and printed low price sarees(@ market price of 500/-) for west Bengal market. what I found interesting was the amount of effort, manpower and professional infra structure being used to produce these sarees.
this unit was shifted from Calcutta to Jetpur about 35yrs. ago and has a unit capacity of printing 15000 sarees per day. Though, due to reduced market demands and stringent government norms on water pollution the present production hovers around 5000 per day.
we start with designing, the design sketches are either sent from Calcutta or a saree sample is sent, the design for the screens and the screens are developed in Jetpur itself. the fabric used for printing is cotton mul (the best one 80/100 count). The long process that the printing, finishing and packaging takes is covered in the pictures that follow.