Dhundhar & Shekhawati · Arid Northwest
Jaipur is where Rajasthani dress became a trade rather than only a practice. The city's printers, dyers, enamellers and bangle-makers were settled by street under the 1727 plan and have stayed there, so the odhni, the razai and the lac bangle are all things you can watch being made a few hundred metres apart. In Shekhawati the signal is different: the merchant household dressed conservatively and put its display into the building instead, which is why the frescoes show more jewellery than the streets ever did.
What is worn
Tied to a high point at the front, in contrast to the flat wide Jodhpuri safa and the low checked Mewari one. Pink is the Jaipur wedding colour and is worn by the groom's party; saffron and multicolour leheriya appear at Teej and Gangaur.
Worn for: Weddings, festivals, formal occasions
A gathered skirt, a fitted bodice and a veil. What is read off it here is the dye and the print — a leheriya odhni in the monsoon, a bandhani for a wedding, a plain block print for every day — and the Sanganeri and Bagru printers supply the whole vocabulary.
Worn for: Everyday and festive
The side-tied coat and its quilted winter form. Jaipur's version is closely associated with the court portraits of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is still made by the old tailoring shops for wedding wear.
Worn for: Winter and ceremonial
A white dhoti or churidar, a plain kurta or bandi, and a small turban — deliberately unshowy. The Marwari merchant's public dress was a statement of creditworthiness rather than of wealth, and the frescoed frontage of the house did the display instead.
Worn for: Everyday and business
A cotton quilt filled with hand-teased cotton, made thin enough to fold into a small square and still warm because the fibre is opened rather than packed. A Jaipur trade in its own right, sold by weight of filling.
Worn for: Winter
Weaves and textiles
Fine floral and butti printing on a white or pale ground, with the design carried by outline blocks and small filler blocks in sequence. The delicacy is possible because Sanganer's water was soft; the trade settled there for that reason and not for any other.
Printing on a harda-treated ivory ground using dabu mud resist with indigo and madder, in bolder and more geometric motifs than Sanganer's. The Chhipa printers work in a single quarter of the village and dry the cloth on open ground beside it.
Tie-resist dyeing — thousands of points tied off by hand for bandhani, the cloth rolled into a rope and bound at intervals for leheriya's diagonal stripe. Jaipur's leheriya is a monsoon and Teej cloth, and the five-colour panchranga version is specific to the city. The Geographical Indication registered in 2023 covers Jodhpur's bandhej rather than the work done here.
Flat metallic ribbon cut into shapes and applied to cloth with a running stitch, so the ornament sits on the surface rather than being embroidered into it. Far cheaper than zardozi to make and far quicker, which is why it spread from court dress to ordinary wedding wear.
Jewellery
Traditional dress of Dhundhar & Shekhawati — garments, handloom weaves, GI-tagged textiles and jewellery. (9)