Sthula Shilpa (स्थूल शिल्प) - Carpets, Leather & Stone
Discover India's heritage in large-scale crafts. From the hand-knotted carpets of Kashmir to Jaipur's leather craft, intricate marble inlay of Agra, and the stone carving traditions of Mahabalipuram - explore crafts that have stood the test of time.
Kashmir Carpets: Knotted Dreams of the Valley — A six-hundred-year-old hand-knotted carpet tradition that a Kashmiri sultan imported from Persia in the 1440s, that Mughal emperors collected in their karkhanas, that almost died in the 1990s, and that a British textile historian named Jenny Housego walked back into a Srinagar courtyard to rebuild in 1998.
Agra & Jaipur Durries: Flatweave Traditions — A royal carpet and rug karkhana set up in mid-nineteenth-century Jaipur by a modernising Maharaja, a very different kind of weaving shed that grew inside the walls of Agra Central Jail during the late British era, a southern Telangana town called Warangal whose punja-woven cotton rugs received their own Geographical Indication in 2018, and a young Rajasthani entrepreneur named Nand Kishore Chaudhary who in 1978 walked to nine newly set up hand looms in a village and began paying the weavers directly without a middleman, an experiment that has since grown into one of the largest direct-to-weaver rug networks in the world.
Charma Kala: The Art of Leather Craft — From the tanning vats of medieval Varanasi to the export sheds of modern Kanpur, the story of India's most stigmatised and most underrated craft.
Pietra Dura: Agra's Stone Inlay Marvel — A Mughal craft that hides lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, carnelian from Gujarat, malachite from the Urals, jade from Khotan, and coral from the Red Sea inside a single marble flower on a cenotaph in Agra. The Taj Mahal is a trade map carved in stone.
Marble & Soapstone: Carving Traditions of Rajasthan — One white calcite quarry in a Nagaur district village that has supplied the Dilwara Jain temples, the Taj Mahal, the Ranakpur Chaumukha, BAPS Akshardham, and the Ayodhya Ram Mandir. The Sompura silpi families who have carved it for a thousand years. And the softer Aravalli soapstones that still feed the Jaipur murti bazaars.