The Ambassadress Of Indian Block Prints
Eat Stay Love|Volume 5 Issue 2

Les Indiennes, a quaint store in Hudson’s shopping district, reworks India’s centuries-old legacy of handmade Kalamkari for a global consumer.

Lakshmi Prabhala
The Ambassadress Of Indian Block Prints

At a two hours’ drive from New York City, in Hudson’s milelong shopping district at Warren Street, is Les Indiennes, a store that manages to charm visitors with its extensive collection of Kalamkari home furnishings, an Indian hand block-printing technique that is centuries-old.

It was love at first sight for Mary Mulcahy Bertgold when she spied blockprinted bedcovers at a UNICEF store in the late ‘90s. Little did she realise then that it was the beginning of a long association which would take her across continents to meet an artisan in a remote town of India.

Bertgold launched a search for similar fabrics and placed an advertisement on IndiaMart, requesting for samples. The parcel that impressed her the most came from Pitchuka Srinivas, a Kalamkari artist from Pedana in coastal Andhra Pradesh. It eventually lead to the foundation of the retail store, Les Indiennes.

This story is from the Volume 5 Issue 2 edition of Eat Stay Love.

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This story is from the Volume 5 Issue 2 edition of Eat Stay Love.

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