Rice Paste White Wall Art

Rice Paste White — 100 museum-grade prints in this palette. Aipan is the ritual floor- and wall-art of the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, made traditionally by Kumaoni women with white rice-paste (biswar) drawn by fingertip onto a geru — red-ochre earth — ground, most often at thresholds, courtyards and household shrines before festivals and life-rites. The strictly two-tone white-on-geru discipline is the heart of the form and distinguishes it from multicolour Mithila/Madhubani work. DESIGN BRIEF: the brief was the moment after the cut, so the hero is a large oval medallion holding the threshing floor itself — pairs of yoked oxen walking a circle over the grain while figures drive them and toss it with winnowing forks — and the rest of the harvest stacks in bands above and below. We held the fill to medium and kept the fish-net frame open rather than a packed mesh, with clear oxblood ground around the oval so the oxen, the sheaves and the winnowing read at a glance. DESIGN BRIEF: the brief was the tree of life as the whole panel, so a single great tree rises from the foot and spreads its rounded boughs to fill most of the field, perched birds and a pair of peacocks at the crown, climbers threading the branches. We held the fill to medium and kept the fish-net frame open rather than a packed mesh, letting clear brick-red ground show through the gaps in the boughs so the tree breathes and the birds and climbers stay legible.

Updated 22 Jun 2026