Woodcut Prints from 19th Century Calcutta
Art365 India
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The Battala woodcuts, together with the Kalighat pats, were the popular art of the Black Town of 19th century Calcutta. They comprise perhaps the only indigenous art activity of the time that may be termed a 'school', so prolific was its impact and so far-reaching its influence.
Although woodblock printing on fabrics has been in India for centuries, the paper adaptation of woodblock printing appeared relatively late and due to the advent of lithography, the Battala woodcut printing had a remarkably short run. The Battala woodcuts were printed on a very cheap newsprint like paper to keep the cost of these prints low. Because of the short run, cheap paper and humid conditions of the region very few of these prints have survived.
The ephemeral Battala woodcuts premiered in the 1840s. These woodcuts were hand-engraved variations of the more popular Kalighat pats, block-printed en masse for public consumption. Like Kalighat pats, they also depicted popular themes of Bengali life: fish, baboos and scandals, along with traditional religious and folklore motifs. Battala artists were essentially engravers — people who could chip away at a block of wood to create signature designs. In some cases, the prints include the name of the engraver or an abbreviation, the press, and the place it was engraved. Battala woodcuts, in combination with other popular art forms of colonial Calcutta, create a rich, visual narrative whose archival value is often ignored. Few woodcut prints survived and the woodcut blocks themselves are now a rare find in the age of offset printing. While Kalighat pat is considered the epitome of the evolution of Bengali art forms under colonial rule, Battala woodcuts are an equally valuable source of information about contemporaneous Bengali society.