Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Raghurajpur, Crafts Village

Date: 25th Sep 2017

Visitors: Arun, Shilpi and Harsh

Fee: None.

Timing: None.

Distance: 1425 Kms one way.

Parking: Roadside.

Food: No.

Photography: Allowed.

Other attractions nearby: Jagannath Temple, Puri

Raghurajpur is heritage crafts village located near puri. Almost every one in the village are artisans who specializes in paintings, palm leaf engravings, cowdung and wooden toys. The specialty is their pattachitra which is painting on cloths called patta. The patas used under the throne Lord Jagannath during ratha yatra every year comes only from this village. Government has given around 25lakhs to the villagers to paint their walls. The mural paintings can be seen on the front of most houses. The village is selected and promoted as a tourist attraction in odisha. However this place remains much less commercialized than Pipili.


Villagers greet the visitors and request to visit each home.

We visited many houses and were amazed by their work. The palm leaf engravings and pattachitra  were exceptional.

Almost all members of the family are involved in creating various art work.

It takes months of painstaking concentration to create some of the intricate paintings.

The villagers are proud of their ancestors exceptional work and showed us some of their creation with lot of pride.

Most of their work is sold in exhibitions. They get notified by the government of any major exhibitions happening in the cities.

Though rich in their skills their living condition doesn't look that good.

There are award winning artists in some of the houses with their award gathering dust under poor conditions.

Pipili is another well known place for its handicraft. All the shops were closed at 8:30 AM when we reached there next day.

A experience that left us speechless and we highly recommend to visit the place when in Puri.
 Raghurajpur offers not only a look at the work of the artisans but also their life at close quarters. 

3 comments:

  1. A nice story covered by you. It felt so good knowing about these artists. Very well presented.

    ReplyDelete
  2. How amazing all this art is! It's so nice to see these exhibitions working at keeping these traditional arts alive .

    ReplyDelete
  3. That’s a superb art village! Whoa! What art,

    ReplyDelete

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