I didn’t grow up learning about Kalamkari. I grew up inside it, on temple walls, in festival fabric, on the sari over the back of a chair, long before I knew it had a name. I was the kid who noticed the tile before the room, the print before the outfit, obsessed with colour long before I called it design. Then one day I saw that same tradition standing behind museum glass, labelled and kept at arm’s length, and something in me refused it. This book is my way of getting back inside the pattern instead of standing outside it.
It moves from spotting pattern in daily life, through the principles behind it (motif, repeat, colour, symmetry, scale), into the physical processes I used to make my own work: lino, lithography, watercolour, screenprint, laser-cut block printing. A recurring illustrated mascot nudges the reader to look twice.The book argues that a personal eye for pattern is a design skill, not a byproduct of technique.
