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Phulkari is a cloth craft which synonymous with Punjab and its rich heritage. A cloth full with floral work by different colored threads, embroidered and filled with flowers is called phulkari craft. It plays a special role in Punjabi lifestyle, especially during their occasions like marriage ceremonies, birthdays and other joyous festivals. Punjabi women created innumerable alluring and interesting designs and patterns by their skillful manipulation of the darn stitch. Simple and sparsely embroidered long scarfs(Duppatas), oversized long scarf (odhinis), and shawls, made for everyday use, were referred as Phulkaris, whereas clothing items that covered the entire body, made for special and ceremonial occasions like weddings and birth of a son were called Baghs (large garden). In Phulkari embroidery ornaments the cloth, whereas in Bagh, it entirely covers the garment so that the base cloth is not visible.
When a girl child was born in typical Punjabi family, her mother and grandmother, start stitching bhags and phulkaris, which were to be given at the time of marriage. Depending on the status the family would give dowry of 11 to 101 bhags and phulkaris. They were embroidered by the women for their own use and use of other family members and were not for sale in the market. Thus, it was a purely domestic and folk art which brings color there day-to-day life. But now in modern era you can find them at cloth store and online stores as well.
Bagh
Bagh is the style where the complete cloth is covered with embroidery work and with number of draning stitches of different shapes like horizontal, vertical and diagonal stitches. Many times, it has been seen that embroiderer make designs of what he sees around like utensils, rolling pin, vegetables and sometimes it has been seen that embroiderer making animal and bird designs too.
Chope and Subhar
Chope and Subhar style of embroidery work has been worn by brides. The chope is embroidered both sides on red with yellow. Shapes like triangle, small square has been made and edges are embroidered with fine arts. The Subhar has a central motif and four motifs on the corners.
Darshan Dwar
Darshan Dwar was a type of embroidery from phulkari which was made as a gift material, offering or bhet. Its design contains mainly geometric shapes and patterns, pillars and candid shot of human like structural embroideries.
Sainchi
Sainchi style is the only style of phulkari where the figures are first drawn using black ink. Then it was filled with embroidering with darn stitches. As first a rough drawing was made, it becomes easy to make even a difficult figure. Due to this you can see many complex designs were being made by Sainchi style of embroidering, for example: many scenes of everyday village life as women cooking, man ploughing, smoking hookah, women grinding wheat flour on chakki, officers coming to village carrying umbrella etc.
Other types of phulkari seen in different regions of Punjab are Phulkari of South and Southwestern Punjab region, Neelak, Til patra, Ghunghat Bagh, Chhamaas etc.
Traditional phulkari embroidery form became more or less on the path of extinct. The old phulkari artists were capable of making craft directly without tracing blocks, but the new artists don’t have those skills and they can’t work without tracing blocks. Phulkari was awarded the geographical indication status of india but that level of authenticity is vanished now.
Over the years, the Indian and Punjab governments have been working towards promotion of Phulkari embroidery, by organizing special training programs, fairs, and exhibitions. Since most of the phulkari artist are selling their products by middle man, so they are not getting paid the actual labour cost and it’s no way near to selling price. But now a days phulkari artists are getting more profit due to e-commerce platform. As there is no middle man policies and embroiderer or artist can register and sell directly through them. Especially platforms like Spenowr, who are focused only on the niche of art and craft are giving the more visibility which is leading them to more profit and better tomorrow.
