Kalamkari Senda Cotton Tote Bag 40x40cm India

100% cotton tote bags.

– Made in India by the Fair-Trade organization Fair Gift.
Fair Gift: it’s a Fairtrade cooperative from Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state in India, which since 2013, are dedicated to the production of handcrafts and textiles.

– By buying this bag, you are providing the women who made them with better life conditions thanks to its work.

– Kalamkari: the bags are made with the Kalamkari technique, an ancestral stamping technique. Only 100% natural inks are used. The word Kalamkari comes from the Turkish word “kalam” which means “quill”, the tool used to make this complex designs.
The colours are obtained by boiling different plants, its roots, its stems or its flowers, depentind on the colour that is needed. There is only one exception that does not come from the plants: the black colour, which is extracted from iron.

The fabrics are hand-painted with the help of a feather (kama) o with the woodcut method. The outline and designs are drawn with a bamboo tip wet in a mix of fermented jagré and water; and then the vegetable inks are applied one by one.
After each colour, the kalamkari is washed, so each piece of fabric can be washed up to 20 times.
The whole process takes around 40 days.

-Practical: they fold inside the smaller bag to carry it comfortably with you always.

-Reusable and eco-friendly.