Bar Wall Art

Bar — 5 museum-grade prints sized and toned for the room. 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. DESIGN BRIEF: the brief was a livelihood, not a deity, so we gave a single toddy palm the centre slot a tree of life would normally hold — fronds fanned at the crown, collecting pots strung along the trunk, a tapper climbing it — and let the present-day village fill in around its foot. We held the fill to medium and kept the fish-net frame open rather than a packed mesh, leaving clear deep-maroon ground so the tall palm reads as the spine and the carriers, dancers and well stay legible.

Updated 22 Jun 2026