House of Falguni

The Dictionary

A working glossary of the crafts, fabrics and forms we make with. Ajrakh, mashru, kundan, ikat, leheriya, katori, jaali — words that appear on our labels and in our writing, defined plainly, with the detail that separates a real one from a printed imitation.

Textiles & Fabrics

Ajrakh
/uj-rakh/
A resist-printing tradition of Kutch and Sindh in which cloth passes through sixteen or more stages of washing, mordanting, printing and natural dyeing. Its palette is built from madder red and indigo blue, and the pattern reads the same on both faces of the cloth — the practical test of a true ajrakh against a screen-printed imitation.
How we work in block print
Bandhani
/baan-dha-nee/
Tie-dye from Gujarat and Rajasthan, where thousands of tiny points of cloth are pinched and bound with thread before dyeing, leaving a field of small undyed dots. Also called bandhej. The finer the dots and the more even their spacing, the more skilled the hand behind them.
Read on craft and heritage
Block Print
Hand-printing with carved teak or sheesham blocks, one colour and one impression at a time. Because each block is placed by eye, the repeat is never mechanically perfect — small breaks in the register are evidence of the hand, not a flaw in the cloth.
Shop block print
Ikat
/ee-kat/
A weaving technique in which the yarn is resist-dyed to the pattern before it ever reaches the loom, so the design emerges as the cloth is woven. The soft feathering at the edge of every motif comes from tiny shifts of the dyed yarn during weaving and cannot be replicated in print.
Shop ikat
Leheriya
/leh-heh-ree-ya/
A Rajasthani resist-dye technique producing diagonal stripes, from the Hindi lehar, meaning wave. The cloth is rolled diagonally and bound at intervals before dyeing, so the stripe runs on the bias rather than with the grain.
Read on craft and heritage
Mulmul
/mul-mul/
A fine, loosely woven cotton — the fabric that reached Europe as muslin. Light enough to layer through an Indian summer and soft from the first wash rather than the tenth. It creases readily; that is the nature of the weave, not a shortcoming.
Shop kurtas and dresses
Modal Silk
A blend of modal, a cellulosic fibre spun from beech pulp, with silk. It falls with the fluid drape of silk and takes dye deeply, but is markedly easier to live with — more forgiving of creasing, and washable at home with care.
Shop stoles and wraps
Mashru
/mash-roo/
A satin-weave textile traditionally woven with a silk warp and cotton weft, bringing a lustrous silk face to the cloth while cotton remains visible at the reverse. Historic Mashru was woven across Gujarat and in the Deccan and South India. Contemporary fabrics can vary in fibre and construction, so the product page remains the authority for exact composition.
Read the Mashru story
Khadi
/kha-dee/
Cloth hand-spun and hand-woven on a charkha, with no power at any stage. Its slightly irregular surface comes from the variation in a hand-spun yarn. Khadi breathes exceptionally well and softens with every wash.
Read our fabric guides
Zari
/zuh-ree/
Metallic thread — historically gold or silver, now most often a fine metallised yarn — woven or embroidered into cloth. The word also carries into metalware, where it describes a warm gold-tone finish.
Shop table accents
Kantha
/kaan-tha/
A running-stitch embroidery from Bengal, first used to quilt worn saris into layered cloth. The stitch travels in long parallel rows and gives the surface its gentle ripple — an early and entirely domestic form of upcycling.
Shop handcrafted diaries

Craft & Technique

Slow Fashion
An approach to making that treats time as an input rather than a cost: small batches, long-lived materials, and production paced to the making rather than to the season. Its practical test is whether a garment is designed to be worn, repaired and kept, rather than replaced.
Read our slow-fashion writing
Small Batch
Production in runs of tens rather than thousands. It limits waste and unsold stock, allows a maker to correct a piece between runs, and means a colourway that sells out may not return in exactly the same form.
About House of Falguni
Natural Dye
Colour drawn from plant, mineral or insect sources — madder, indigo, pomegranate rind, iron — and fixed with a mordant. Natural dyes shift gently with wear and washing; that softening over years is a property of the dye, not a failure of it.
Read on craft and heritage
Mordant
/mor-dant/
The metallic salt that binds dye to fibre. It is what makes a natural colour permanent, and it also alters the shade — the same dye bath over an alum mordant and an iron mordant yields two entirely different colours.
Read on craft and heritage
Resist Dyeing
Any method that blocks dye from reaching part of the cloth so a pattern emerges in reverse — tied, as in bandhani; printed with mud or wax, as in ajrakh; or dyed in the yarn, as in ikat. The oldest family of patterning techniques in Indian textiles.
How we work in ikat
Indo-Western
Dress that takes an Indian craft, textile or silhouette and builds it into a Western cut — a block-printed shirt dress, a kurta with a collar and placket. Distinct from fusion styling, where two finished garments from different traditions are simply worn together.
Shop kurtas and dresses
Co-ord Set
Two pieces cut and coloured to be worn together, but designed so each also works apart. Its value is arithmetic: a well-made co-ord is three outfits, not one.
Shop co-ord sets
Upcycling
Remaking existing material into something of greater value than the original — offcuts into jewellery, worn saris into quilted cloth. It differs from recycling, which breaks material down to its fibre before rebuilding it, losing quality at each pass.
Why we work in cloth
Artisanal
Made substantially by hand, by a named maker or workshop, in numbers a hand can manage. The word is unregulated and freely used in marketing; the questions worth asking are who made it, where, and how many exist.
What we do not claim

Jewellery & Adornment

Kundan
/kun-dun/
A setting technique, not a stone. Highly refined gold foil is worked at room temperature around an uncut stone to hold it in place, so no claws or prongs are visible. The result is the flat, luminous, framed look associated with Rajasthani court jewellery.
Shop kundan earrings
Ghungroo
/ghun-groo/
Small metal bells, traditionally tied at the ankles of classical dancers. Worked into jewellery they add a low, soft sound to movement — the reason a ghungroo earring is felt as much as seen.
Shop ghungroo earrings
Chandbali
/chaand-baa-lee/
A crescent-shaped earring, from chand, meaning moon. Traditionally Hyderabadi, worn wide and dropping close to the shoulder. Its weight is best carried with an open neckline and hair worn away from the face.
Shop earrings
Jhumka
/jhoom-ka/
A bell- or dome-shaped drop earring, usually fringed with small beads or pearls along its rim. The form is among the oldest in Indian jewellery and appears in temple sculpture centuries before it entered everyday dress.
Explore jhumka earrings
Kada
/kuh-daa/
A solid, rigid bangle, heavier and broader than a bracelet, worn singly or as a pair. Unlike a stacking bangle it is meant to be the whole statement on the wrist.
Shop bangles and bracelets
Meenakari
/mee-na-ka-ree/
The art of fusing coloured enamel into engraved metal, brought to Rajasthan under Mughal patronage. Often worked on the reverse of a kundan piece, so the jewellery is finished on the side no one sees — the traditional mark of a serious maker.
How we work in kundan
Mirror Work
Known as shisha or abhla bharat, the practice of securing small mirrors to cloth with a lattice of embroidery stitches. Originally worked with mica, and carried in Gujarati and Rajasthani dress as much for the way it catches light as for ornament.
Shop earrings
Fabric Jewellery
Jewellery whose body is textile rather than metal — printed, dyed or embroidered cloth shaped over a light frame. It allows a large silhouette at a fraction of the weight, which is why a statement fabric earring can be worn from morning to evening without strain.
Why we work in cloth
Cowrie
/kow-ree/
A small glossy sea shell used as currency across the Indian Ocean for centuries before it became ornament. It carries associations of prosperity and protection and appears across tribal jewellery traditions in India and West Africa alike.
Shop fabric neckpieces

Home & Table

Blue Pottery
A Jaipur ceramic tradition made without clay: the body is quartz, powdered glass and fuller's earth, fired at low temperature and glazed in cobalt blue and turquoise. The technique arrived from Persia via Central Asia and is now practised by only a handful of families.
How we work in ceramic
Reactive Glaze
A glaze formulated to move and break during firing, so colour pools where the surface dips and thins where it rises. No two pieces emerge identical; variation in tone across a set is the intended result of the process.
Shop dinnerware
Katori
/kuh-toh-ree/
A small round bowl, the unit of the Indian thali. Sized for dal, curd, chutney or dessert rather than for a whole course, and traditionally set around a larger plate rather than stacked in front of it.
Shop dinnerware
Jaali
/jaa-lee/
A perforated lattice screen, carved in stone or worked in wood, used across Indian architecture to filter light and air while preserving privacy. As a textile motif it becomes a repeating geometric grid.
Shop cushion covers
Macramé
/mak-ra-may/
Textile made entirely by knotting rather than weaving or knitting. Every join in a macramé piece is tied by hand, which is why the technique resists mechanisation and remains an artisan craft.
Marble and knot, in full
Hand-Carved Marble
Marble worked by hand rather than by machine, in a lineage of stone carving centred on Makrana and Agra. Each block carries its own veining, so no two pieces share a pattern — a tray or coaster set is matched by tone, never made identical.
Marble and knot, in full

No term matches that search. Tell us the word and we will write it in.

This dictionary defines. The Craft explains — the eight traditions we actually work in, where each comes from, and what we will not claim about them. For longer reading, see Craft & Heritage and Fabric Guides in our journal.

If a word on one of our labels is not here yet, tell us and we will add it.