Working Calm Wall Art

Working Calm — 2 museum-grade prints that set the mood. Sohrai is a harvest-season wall art of Hazaribagh district, Jharkhand, painted by women of tribal and Kurmi communities in natural earth pigments — manganese black, hematite red, kaolin white and ochre yellow — on a daubed mud wall to welcome cattle home after the rice harvest, around Diwali. The festival is rooted in exactly this paddy-and-millet reaping: the cutting, binding and gathering of the grain that the season is built around. Khovar is the marriage and household wall art of Hazaribagh district, Jharkhand, combed by women of tribal and Kurmi communities using a sgraffito technique — a wet white kaolin slip over a dark base coat, combed and scratched away with a broken comb so the dark ground reads as line. Tendu (kendu) leaf collection is a major seasonal forest livelihood across Jharkhand, with families plucking, bundling and selling leaves; it sits beside mahua, sal and honey gathering as forest income that the Sohrai-Khovar communities live by.

Updated 22 Jun 2026