Machilipatnam
— — the old port that gave Kalamkari its name.
Not only on a wall.
“An old port town on the Bay of Bengal, set where the Krishna delta meets the Coromandel Coast. The Dutch built a factory here in 1605, the East India Company arrived in 1611, and for two centuries it was one of the great cotton ports of the eastern seaboard. The block-printed Kalamkari cloth still made in the Pedana suburb takes its name from the qalam, the bamboo pen.
Machilipatnam, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Machilipatnam sits on the Bay of Bengal in Krishna District, coastal Andhra Pradesh, where the Krishna River delta opens onto the Coromandel Coast at about 14 metres elevation. It serves as the district headquarters and holds a population of roughly 170,000 in the city proper. The town stands about 70 kilometres east of Vijayawada, the nearest major rail hub, and is connected to it by NH216 and a branch line. The deep-water Machilipatnam Port is under expansion as a multi-cargo facility, and the historic harbour is the seat from which Dutch, English and French factories worked from the early 17th century onward.
The town carries one of the deepest European-trade pasts on the Coromandel Coast. The Dutch East India Company opened its first Indian factory here in 1605, the English East India Company arrived in 1611, and the French followed mid-century. For most of the 17th century the port was the largest cotton-cloth export point on the eastern seaboard, sending painted and printed muslins to Persia, Southeast Asia and Europe. A cyclone in November 1864 killed an estimated 30,000 residents and effectively ended the town's status as a major port, after which trade shifted south to Madras.
Most visitors arrive for the Pedana Kalamkari workshops in the suburb a few kilometres north of the centre, where about 200 family workshops still print cotton with carved teak blocks and natural dyes. The craft holds a Geographical Indication tag awarded by the Indian government in 2008, distinct from the painted Srikalahasti style of southern Andhra. The Bandar Fort ruins and the old Dutch cemetery sit near the eastern shore, and Manginapudi Beach, about 11 kilometres east of the town centre, is the local seaside on weekends.