Before it was a print, it was a pair of hands.
Somewhere in India, right now, a person is pressing a carved wooden block into cloth. Another is tying a knot so small you could miss it. Another is drawing a pattern on a doorstep with a pinch of rice flour, knowing the feet of the day will rub it away.
None of them is doing it for the first time. They are doing what their mothers and fathers did, and what theirs did before them, in the same way, for centuries.
We started SĀNTI because we couldn’t stop looking at these patterns. And we couldn’t stop wondering: why should something this beautiful stay behind glass, or in a trunk, or in a story only a few people know?
So we gathered twelve of them. Here is where each one comes from, and why we couldn’t leave it behind.
Ajrakh
Kutch, Gujarat · Barmer, Rajasthan
Before the indigo and madder ever touch the cloth, it is printed, covered in mud, dyed and washed. Then it happens again, and again. It can take days of patient work before the pattern finally shows itself. Khatri families carried this craft from Sindh to Kutch and Barmer centuries ago, and it is printed on both sides of the cloth, because the maker wants the back to be as beautiful as the front.
That is what Ajrakh teaches: do the work no one will see, and do it well. Wear it, and you carry that patience with you.
Craft: resist block printing · Region: Kutch and Barmer · Meaning: balance and nature, in indigo and red
Kalamkari
Andhra Pradesh
Kalamkari means “pen work.” A bamboo pen, a steady hand, and a story: flowers, trees, old epics, drawn onto cotton line by line. In some towns the same stories are pressed from carved blocks instead. The colours come from roots, bark and leaves.
It is cloth made to be read, slowly, the way you read a letter from someone you love.
Craft: hand painting and block printing · Region: Srikalahasti and Machilipatnam · Meaning: stories, trees and flowers
Bandhani
Gujarat · Rajasthan
Every tiny dot is a knot, tied by hand around a pinch of cloth. Thousands of them, one after another, before the dye ever arrives. Then the knots are opened, and the pattern appears exactly where the colour was held back.
This is the cloth of weddings and festivals, of mothers handing a precious piece down to daughters. When you see Bandhani, you are seeing a very long evening of someone’s care.
Craft: tie-dye resist · Region: Gujarat and Rajasthan · Meaning: celebration and heritage
Bagh
Bagh, Madhya Pradesh
On the banks of a river, printers press carved wooden blocks into red and black, one impression at a time. Then the cloth is washed in the river, whose water is said to make the colours glow.
You can almost hear it: the knock of wood on cloth, the rhythm of hands, the sound of water. A print with a heartbeat.
Craft: hand block printing · Region: Bagh, Madhya Pradesh · Meaning: peacocks and florals: grace and prosperity
Dabu
Bagru and Akola, Rajasthan
Dabu begins with mud. A paste is pressed onto the cloth with wooden blocks, and wherever it sits, the indigo can never reach. Wash it away and the pattern appears in soft, uneven lines.
It is a print made of what was held back. There is something quietly true about that.
Craft: mud-resist block printing · Region: Bagru and Akola · Meaning: indigo and earth
Buta
Persia · Kashmir · India
A teardrop, a flower, a seed: the buta is all of them at once. It travelled from Persian courts to Kashmiri shawls to the printed cloth of Rajasthan and Gujarat. You may know it as paisley. In India it is older and more loved than that word can hold.
It is the motif a family keeps, because it means growth, beauty, and the hope that something good will keep going.
Craft: block printing and weaving · Meaning: beauty, growth and continuity
Kolam
Tamil Nadu · South India
At dawn, before the day begins, a kolam is drawn at the doorstep in rice flour: dots first, then looping lines. It welcomes whoever walks in. It feeds the ants and the birds. By evening it is gone, and tomorrow it will be drawn again.
Nobody keeps it. Nobody needs to. It is a kindness that renews itself every morning.
Craft: floor drawing in rice flour · Region: Tamil Nadu · Meaning: welcome, prosperity and care
Mughal Mosaic
North India
In the Mughal courts, craftsmen set stone, tile and carved screens into patterns of perfect balance, where Persian geometry meets Indian flowers. Stand in front of one in Agra or Delhi and the whole room goes quiet.
We wanted a little of that stillness for the days that feel too loud.
Craft: tilework, carved screens and inlay · Meaning: balance, symmetry and the garden
Madras Check
Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Woven on looms in Madras, now Chennai, in cotton light enough for the heat. The colours were traditionally made to bleed softly in the wash, so the cloth changes with you.
It travelled the world and still feels like home.
Craft: handloom cotton check · Meaning: colour, comfort and home
Pichwai
Nathdwara, Rajasthan
“Pichwai” means “that which hangs at the back”: enormous cloths, painted by hand over days and hung behind Shrinathji in the temple at Nathdwara, changed with the seasons. The lotus is one of its best-loved motifs. It rises from the water without carrying the mud.
Here it is a small moment of calm, to wear every day.
Craft: hand painting · Meaning: the lotus: purity, calm and devotion
Ikat
Telangana · Andhra Pradesh · Odisha
In India, a pattern can be a language of its own.
Before the cloth, there is a design that lives only in the threads. Hands tie sections of yarn, dye them, then tie again, imagining a pattern no one can see yet. Only when the threads meet on the loom does it appear: diamonds, waves and soft, feathered edges that tremble a little, the way handwriting does.
In Pochampally it became a rhythm of bold geometry. In Odisha, weavers shaped flowing forms drawn from the world around them. Different hands, different colours, the same quiet patience, passed from one generation to the next.
Ours is not a copy of any one cloth. It is a tribute to pattern, and to everyone who ever tied a thread and trusted it to become something beautiful.
Craft: tied and dyed yarn, woven · Region: Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha · Meaning: patience, rhythm and memory
Kerala Mural
Kerala · South India
Centuries before there were screens and prints, there were walls. And on the walls of Kerala’s temples and palaces, painters told stories.
With natural pigments, mineral colours and hand-made brushes, they filled the space with deep reds, golds, greens and blues, held together by bold, flowing lines. Peacocks, lotus ponds, vines and clouds, gods and legends. Nothing was only decoration. Every motif carried a story, a blessing, a wish for prosperity.
The peacock, the mor, stands for grace, beauty, good fortune, renewal and divine protection. The lotus rises from the water, calm and unstained. Both were painted slowly, by people who knew the walls would outlive them.
We borrowed their colours and their calm, and made a quiet panel you can wear. Not a copy of the walls. A small fragment of them, carried into your day.
Craft: hand-painted temple and palace murals · Region: Kerala and South India · Meaning: grace, good fortune, renewal and divine protection
What we promise you
We are not the artisans, and we won’t pretend to be. Every SĀNTI print is inspired by these traditions, reimagined in a calm, modern shape, and printed to order on things you use every day: tees, mugs, journals, totes, caps and phone cases.
But we promise this much: every print starts with its story. We tell you where it comes from, what it means, and whose patience it carries, so that when you wear it, you are not wearing a costume. You are carrying a small piece of a very long conversation.
Read how SĀNTI began → Our Story
SĀNTI — Wear the Story.