Madhya Pradesh Quiz: Handicrafts and GI Tags (Chanderi, Maheshwari)

Chanderi lies in Ashoknagar district, in the Betwa belt on the old boundary between Malwa and Bundelkhand, and its weavers make the light, glossy, almost transparent Chanderi fabric in cotton, in silk and in the silk and cotton mix for which the town is best known.

Maheshwar stands on the north bank of the Narmada in Khargone district and was the capital of Ahilyabai Holkar in the eighteenth century.

Ahilyabai Holkar ruled Malwa from Maheshwar in the eighteenth century and is credited with establishing the weaving of the town, bringing in weavers and having borders designed from the carving of the local temples and fort.

Bagh print takes its name from the village of Bagh in Dhar district, where the Khatri families print cotton and silk with hand cut wooden blocks and dye it in vegetable colours, chiefly alizarin from the madder root for red and indigo for blue.

The Kadaknath is a breed of fowl of the Jhabua and Alirajpur tribal belt in western Madhya Pradesh, with dark flesh, dark bones and a very low fat content, and it is reared by the Bhil and Bhilala families of the region.

Gond painting belongs to the Gond people of the eastern districts of the state, chiefly Dindori and Mandla, where it began as a decoration of the mud wall and the floor and moved to paper and canvas in the late twentieth century.

Pithora is a wall painting of the Bhil and Bhilala people of the Jhabua, Alirajpur and Dhar belt.

Maheshwar is a town of Khargone district, formerly called West Nimar, on the north bank of the Narmada.

Chanderi is woven in three recognised kinds, pure cotton, pure silk, and the silk and cotton mix, and it is the last of these that gives the cloth its characteristic sheer, glossy, almost transparent body with a soft fall.

Batik, in which molten wax is applied to resist the dye so that the covered parts stay uncoloured, is practised at Bherugarh in Ujjain, and the Bherugarh print is the name under which the cloth is sold.