Discover
Every place has a story. Stories that sustained us then, sustain us now, and will carry us forward.
Discover the products, places and traditions that give India’s cities and regions their distinct identity.
Know the place. Discover what it makes.
Dive into the crafts that define each corner of India.
North East IndiaLongpi (Nungbi), Manipur
The wheel-less black stoneware of the Tangkhul Naga villages of Nungbi in Manipur's Ukhrul district. Vessels are built by hand from a paste of crushed weathered rock and serpentine stone, shaped against a wooden mould and paddle, fired in an open bonfire, and rubbed while hot with a local leaf to a soft charcoal-grey sheen.
Andro, Manipur
Andro, a Chakpa village east of Imphal in Manipur, makes cooking pots, water vessels, ritual pots, pipes and lamps entirely without a potter's wheel. The maker builds each vessel by hand and beats it into shape with a wooden paddle worked against a stone anvil held inside, then fires it in an open bonfire rather than a kiln, which leaves the surface mottled in red, brown and smoky black. The village also keeps a sacred perpetual fire and a cultural complex, and its potters have been documented as living carriers of a pre-wheel ceramic technology.
Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh
Arunachal Pradesh's many communities — Apatani, Adi, Nyishi, Galo, Monpa, Wancho and others — weave shawls, skirts, jackets, bags and ceremonial cloths on backstrap and loin looms, each group with its own palette, motifs and weave. Alongside the textiles, households make cane and bamboo baskets, carrying frames, mats, containers and the woven cane helmets and hats that are part of men's dress, while the Monpa of the Tawang area make paper by hand from a local shrub and weave wool carpets. Much of this is still made for the family and the village rather than for sale, and a woven cloth's pattern can identify the wearer's community and clan.
Asharikandi, Assam
Asharikandi, a village in Dhubri district of western Assam, is the largest terracotta and clay-craft cluster in the northeast. Its potters make the celebrated Hatima Putul — a stylised elephant-headed mother holding a child — along with toys, deities, decorative birds and animals, incense stands, hookah bowls, lamps, tiles and everyday cooking pots, all finished in a warm brick-red or, when reduced in the kiln, a smoky grey. Hundreds of families in and around the village are involved in some stage of the work.
Sarthebari, Assam
Sarthebari, in Barpeta district, is the centre of Assam's bell-metal industry, working an alloy of copper and tin into the vessels that fill an Assamese home and shrine: the footed xorai used to offer betel nut, gifts and prasad; the water-pot-shaped bota; plates (kahi), bowls (bati), tumblers, lamps and the tal cymbals used in kirtan. The finished ware is a pale golden colour, rings clearly when struck, and is central to Bihu, weddings and religious ceremony, where a xorai is offered to elders and honoured guests.
Jorhat, Assam
Eri silk is a soft, matte, warm silk woven across Upper Assam, with Jorhat a notable centre, and among the Bodo and in Meghalaya. Unlike mulberry and muga silk, the eri cocoon is open-ended, so the moth leaves before the cocoon is processed and the fibre is spun rather than reeled, giving a woolly, cotton-like handle. It is made into shawls, stoles, the chadar-mekhela worn by Assamese women, jackets and blankets, in natural cream and brick tones or dyed.
Imphal, Manipur
The cushion-soft mat and basketry craft of Manipur, made from 'kauna', a water reed grown in the wetlands and paddy fields around Loktak Lake and Imphal. The spongy, flexible stems are woven and coiled into prayer mats, sitting mats ('phak'), cushions ('kambong'), bags, hats and increasingly into contemporary furniture and homeware.
Shillong, Meghalaya
The Khasi and Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya have a deep tradition of cane and bamboo work, a universal village skill rather than a specialist trade. Households make the conical carrying basket (khoh) slung from the forehead, winnowing and drying trays, granary and storage baskets, fish traps, the round cane stool (murah), mats, hats, umbrellas, and cane and bamboo furniture and containers. The border markets and Shillong's craft outlets carry the work to a wider market.
Mon, Nagaland
The Konyak Naga of Mon district, Nagaland, have strong traditions of woodcarving and of ornament-making. Carvers make house and morung posts, the massive hollowed log-drum, gateposts, figures, masks and, historically, the carved commemorations of a headhunting past — human and mithun heads, hornbills, tigers and elephants in bold relief. The ornaments are equally striking: necklaces, headgear, armlets and ear ornaments of coloured glass beads, conch and cowrie shell, boar tusk, goat hair, hornbill feathers, bone, cane and small cast-brass heads.
Majuli, Assam
Majuli, the large river island in the Brahmaputra, is a centre of Assamese Neo-Vaishnavite culture, home to monasteries (satras) founded in the tradition of the saint Srimanta Sankardeva. Its best-known craft is the mukha — a mask of a god, demon, bird or animal, built on a bamboo frame and finished in clay and paint, worn in the bhaona dance-dramas that stage episodes from the Ramayana and Bhagavata. Separately, the Salmora potters of the island make hand-built, wheel-less earthenware pots and pitchers.
Imphal, Manipur
Handloom weaving in Manipur is a near-universal skill among Meitei women of the valley, done on loin (backstrap) and fly-shuttle looms in almost every household. The core products are the phanek (a wrap-skirt, plain, striped or with an embroidered border), the innaphi (a light shawl or wrap), shirting and dress cloth, and, increasingly, sarees. Signature patterns include the moirang phee, a triangular temple-step border, the fine transparent wangkhei phee, and the embroidered shaphee lanphee cloth once given to warriors.
Ri-Bhoi, Meghalaya
Meghalaya eri silk, known locally as ryndia, is a soft, warm, matte silk reared, spun and woven by Khasi households, with the Ri-Bhoi villages of Umden and Diwon at its centre. The open-ended eri cocoon is processed after the moth has left, so the silk is spun rather than reeled and the tradition is called 'peace silk'. It is woven into shawls, stoles, the cloth for the Khasi jainsem, jackets and blankets, in natural cream and fawn or dyed with lac, iron, turmeric and local leaves and barks.
Aizawl, Mizoram
Mizo handloom weaving produces the puan — a rectangular wrap-cloth worn as a lower garment or shawl — in named varieties defined by their patterned bands: the bright puanchei worn by women at festivals and weddings, the black-and-red puandum used at funerals and in bride-price, the ngotekherh with its white and black stripes, and the tawlhloh puan of valour. Bamboo and cane, abundant across Mizoram, are woven into carrying baskets (em), winnowing trays, hats (khumbeu), fish traps, mats and the bamboos used in the cheraw (bamboo) dance.
Moirang, Manipur
A fine cotton textile from Manipur named for the town of Moirang, distinguished by its border and end-piece pattern of nested triangular 'temple' motifs — the 'moirang pheejin'. Woven as saris, wraps, phaneks (the Manipuri wrap skirt) and shawls, it is one of the state's signature handloom cloths.
Sualkuchi, Assam
Muga is a wild silk found only in Assam, prized for its natural glossy golden-amber colour, which needs no dye and deepens with age and washing. It is reeled from cocoons of a silkmoth that feeds on the som and soalu trees of the Brahmaputra valley and woven, chiefly at Sualkuchi, into the mekhela-chador (the two-piece Assamese women's garment), sarees, shawls, and the borders of the gamosa. Muga is stronger and more durable than mulberry silk and is the most expensive of Assam's three silks.
Kohima, Nagaland
Naga textiles are woven on the loin (backstrap) loom by the women of each tribe, and every tribe — Angami, Ao, Sema, Lotha, Chakhesang, Rengma, Phom, Konyak and others — has its own shawls, body-cloths and skirts, defined by their striped bands and by the right to wear them. Some shawls, such as the Ao tsungkotepsu, are reserved for men who have taken heads or given feasts of merit, and carry a painted or appliquéd median band with figures of mithun, elephant, tiger, spear and human heads. The ornaments are equally coded: multi-strand necklaces of red glass beads, conch and cowrie shell, carnelian, brass, bone and boar tusk, and armlets, headgear and ear ornaments for warriors and dancers.
Gangtok, Sikkim
Sikkim's carpet and woollen craft is organised largely around the state's Directorate of Handicrafts and Handloom in Gangtok, set up in the 1950s, and around Tibetan-refugee and local weaver communities. Hand-knotted wool carpets are made in Tibetan designs — dragons, snow lions, the eight auspicious symbols, floral medallions, geometric borders — for the floor and the wall, and woollen weaving produces blankets, shawls, jackets, bags and the striped cloth of Lepcha and Bhutia dress. Choktse folding tables, thangka painting and mask-making are taught alongside.
Gangtok, Sikkim
The Buddhist scroll painting of the Himalayas, practised in the monasteries and craft centres of Sikkim and the wider Indian Himalayan belt. A thangka is a religious image on cloth — a Buddha, a deity, a mandala, a lineage tree — painted to exact iconometric proportion in mineral colour and gold, then mounted in a brocade border with a silk cover so it can be rolled for travel and teaching.
Agartala, Tripura
Tripura, the small hill state of the far northeast, has two strong household crafts. Cane and bamboo, both abundant, are split and woven into furniture, room dividers and blinds, floor and wall mats, baskets, trays, lampshades, hats and containers, and Tripura has promoted itself as a bamboo-craft state with a development agency and design input. Handloom weaving on the loin (backstrap) loom produces the Tripuri woman's dress — the rignai (a wrap-skirt with bands of woven pattern) and the risa (a narrow breast-and-shoulder cloth) — as well as shawls, stoles and dress fabric, each community with its own colours and motifs.
Every craft has a story. Every story begins with tradition.
