Kalamkari Rumal

By Kalamkari (Pre-1500s till Present)

ca. 1640–50 · Cotton · 32 in × 35 in · Kalamkari

Commission a hand-painted reproduction from Panchrang artists.

This rumal belongs to the celebrated Golconda group in the Met, made in the Deccan around 1640–50. Where its companion pieces range across varied courtly vignettes, this one has a clear organising theme: wine drinking and its pleasurable effects appear to unify all the vignettes on this rumal. The scenes are worked in the characteristic kalamkari manner, each colour laid down by hand with the kalam or reserved with resist, then fixed through repeated dye baths, a slow, exacting process. Like the rest of this remarkable set, it reflects the cosmopolitan pleasure culture of the Golconda court and its blending of Persian and Indian visual worlds, and it forms part of the same group whose members carry seventeenth-century inventory notes from the Amber Palace storerooms near Jaipur.