Warm Wall Art

Warm — 112 museum-grade prints that set the mood. DESIGN BRIEF: the brief was the communal youth hall, an interior crowded with seated figures, so we cut its front wall away and drew the rows of young people straight on under one wide roof, a standing elder with a raised hand at the centre, and set the village day around it — ploughing, weaving, cooking, the well. We held the fill to medium and kept the fish-net frame open rather than a packed mesh, so even with the hall full the oxblood ground threads through and each seated row and chore stays legible. Kalighat Pat grew up in 19th-century Kolkata, painted by patua (chitrakar) scroll-painters who settled near the Kalighat Kali temple and sold quick watercolours to pilgrims. Alongside gods and goddesses they painted the everyday people of Calcutta — milkmaids, fish-sellers, musicians and dandies — in the same economical brush, which is why the form is often called India's first modern popular art. Aipan is the ritual floor- and wall-art of the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, drawn traditionally by Kumaoni women with white rice-paste (biswar) on a geru (red-ochre) earth ground. Diwali is the festival of lights, when courtyards are swept and lit with diyas, children play with sparklers (phuljhadi), and the lotus, lit lamp, and swastika carry the auspicious welcome of the season.

Updated 22 Jun 2026