Lacquerware & Ganjifa: Painted Traditions

Gold leaf from Nirmal, royal lacquer from Sawantwadi, and the ten avatars of Vishnu painted one card at a time on India's own hand-made playing decks.

Gold leaf from Nirmal, royal lacquer from Sawantwadi, and the ten avatars of Vishnu painted one card at a time on India's own hand-made playing decks.

A Fish on a Wooden Circle

It is a hot afternoon in Sawantwadi, a small princely capital tucked into the green hills of the Konkan coast. The year is somewhere around 1748. Inside a low stone workshop, not far from the Bhonsle royal palace, a court painter we will call Govinda Chitari (a composite figure, drawn from the Chitari community of hereditary painters who served the Sawantwadi court) is leaning over a wooden disc no larger than a rupee coin. A small brass brazier warms his right elbow. A tray of tiny shell cups holds ground pigments in red, yellow, black, and green. A thin brush made from squirrel hair hovers above the wooden disc. The disc is already covered in a smooth layer of black lacquer, polished until it catches the afternoon light.

Govinda is painting a fish. Not any fish. This is Matsya, the first of the ten avatars of Vishnu, the one who saved the Vedas and the first humans from the great flood. The fish's body curls across the disc like a question mark. Govinda needs to get the scales right. Each scale is smaller than a grain of rice, and each one must be tipped with a flake of real gold leaf. This single card, the Matsya raja card, is one of one hundred and twenty cards that make up a full Dashavatara Ganjifa deck. He has eight more avatars to paint after this. The Bhonsle raja has asked for the completed deck before the Dussehra festival, and the Dussehra moon is already growing in the night sky.

Govinda dips the squirrel brush into a drop of gold. He holds his breath. The scale lands exactly where it should. He is not just painting a playing card. He is painting a small, portable temple.