Celebratory Wall Art

Celebratory — 42 museum-grade prints that set the mood. Aipan is the ritual floor- and wall-art of the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, drawn traditionally by Kumaoni women with white rice-paste (biswar) applied by fingertip onto a geru (red-ochre) earth ground. Weddings are among Aipan's great occasions, when the threshold, courtyard, and ceremony floor are drawn for the rite; this fusion piece carries the bride's decorated hands into that same two-tone line. Chenda melam is the percussion ensemble at the heart of Kerala's temple festivals — most famously the Thrissur Pooram — built on the chenda, a cylindrical drum played upright with sticks, supported by the elathalam cymbals and the curved kombu and kuzhal wind instruments. Here it is set inside bhitti chitra, Kerala's temple-mural tradition that flourished roughly from the 16th to 19th century and is still painted today: flat panchavarna pigments (red, yellow, green, black, white over an ochre ground), a bold lamp-black outline and the school's elongated lotus-shaped eyes. 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