Chikankari: A Complete Introduction to Lucknow's Hand Embroidery

What Chikankari is

Chikankari is a hand-embroidery tradition from Lucknow, worked in fine white or pastel cotton thread on light, breathable cloth. Its signature is restraint: floral and vine motifs — jasmine, rose, lotus, creeping paisley — rendered in thread that sits close in tone to the fabric beneath, so the pattern reveals itself in texture and shadow rather than in colour.

It is one of very few Indian embroidery traditions that is fundamentally quiet. Where zardozi announces itself in gold, Chikankari asks you to come closer.

Where it came from

The craft's origins are genuinely debated. The most repeated story credits Nur Jahan, the Mughal empress, with introducing or popularising it — a lovely account, though historians treat it as legend rather than documented fact. What is better established is that Chikankari flourished in Lucknow under the patronage of the Nawabs of Awadh in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and that the city has been its centre ever since.

That association is now formally recognised. Lucknow Chikan Craft holds a Geographical Indication registration, granted in 2008, which ties the name to work produced in the Lucknow region.

How a piece is actually made

A finished kurta looks simple. The process behind it is not, and it passes through several pairs of hands.

 
1. Block carving. The design is carved into wooden blocks — itself a separate craft, practised by separate artisans.
 
2. Printing. The blocks stamp the pattern onto the cloth in a washable blue dye. This is a guide, not decoration; every trace of it must disappear later.
 
3. Embroidery. The karigar follows the printed lines by hand. Different stitches often go to different specialists — one hand for jaali, another for knotwork.
 
4. Dhulai. The washing stage, which lifts out the printed blue entirely. Traditionally done by dhobis at the river; the piece comes back with only the thread remaining.
 
5. Finishing. Starching, pressing, and stitching into the final garment.

A lightly worked cotton kurta takes days. A densely embroidered piece with open jaali panels and knotted florals takes weeks, and the cost of it is almost entirely labour.

The stitches

Chikankari is not a single stitch but a vocabulary of them — traditionally counted at around thirty-two, though a smaller set does most of the work today. They fall into three broad families:

 
• Flat stitches lie level with the fabric. Tepchi, a running stitch, outlines and fills. Bakhiya — the famous shadow work — is worked from the reverse of the cloth in a herringbone, so the front shows a soft translucent bloom of colour rather than the stitching itself.
 
• Embossed stitches stand raised from the surface. Murri makes tiny rice-shaped knots, usually clustered as flower centres. Phanda is its finer, rounder cousin — smaller, slower, and the mark of high-grade work.
 
• Jaali is the open, net-like effect. The karigar pushes the fabric's own warp and weft threads apart with a needle and secures them open. Nothing is cut. Held to the light, real jaali shows an even lattice of the cloth itself.

The names are worth learning. Asking a seller which stitches are in a piece is the quickest way to find out whether they know what they are selling.

The fabrics

Chikankari is worked on cloth that lets light and air through — mulmul cotton, cotton voile, chanderi, kota doria, georgette, and occasionally fine silk. This is not incidental. Shadow work only reads properly on semi-sheer fabric, and the craft evolved in a climate where breathability was the point. A Chikankari cotton kurta in June is a genuinely practical garment, not just a beautiful one.

Caring for it

Hand-embroidered cotton is more forgiving than people fear, but it has rules. Wash gently by hand in cool water with a mild detergent, never wring or brush the embroidered areas, dry in shade rather than direct sun, and press on the reverse. Dry cleaning suits georgette and silk pieces. Treated reasonably, a good Chikankari kurta outlasts almost anything else in a wardrobe.

Why it still matters

Every Chikankari garment represents hours of someone's skill, most often a woman working from home in or around Lucknow. Machine embroidery can imitate the look at a fraction of the price, and much of what is sold as Chikankari today is exactly that. Knowing what the real thing is — how it is made, what it should feel like under a fingertip — is what keeps the craft economically alive.

Where we fit

Janaki Apparels works with karigars in Lucknow, and every piece we make is hand-embroidered. If you would like to know the stitches in a particular garment, ask us — we will tell you.