Lampblack Wall Art

Lampblack — 160 museum-grade prints in this palette. Kalighat Pat grew up in 19th-century Kolkata, painted by migrant patua (chitrakar) scroll-painters who settled near the Kalighat Kali temple and sold quick watercolour souvenirs to pilgrims. Working on mill-made paper with a bold single black brush outline and soft 'boneless' shaded strokes on a plain ground, they painted gods and goddesses alongside what is often called India's first modern social satire — sharp, affectionate caricatures of the colonial 'babu' and the hypocrisies of Calcutta life. Cheriyal scrolls come from Cheriyal village in Telangana's Siddipet district, painted for generations by the Nakashi artist community. They were long narrative cloth scrolls unrolled episode by episode by travelling balladeer-storytellers — the kaki padagollu and allied story-telling castes — who sang the epics and caste-origin legends to village audiences through the night. Bathukamma is Telangana's autumn flower festival, held over nine days around Durga Navaratri, when women build a conical stack of seasonal blooms — gunugu, tangedu, marigold — and circle it singing through the evening before floating it on a tank or lake. Cheriyal scroll painting itself comes from Cheriyal village in Telangana's Siddipet district, painted by the Nakashi artist community on a signature red ground and once unrolled by travelling balladeers to narrate epics and caste legends.

Updated 22 Jun 2026