Bhubaneswar: Raghurajpur in Puri district of Odisha is among the eight craft villages across the country selected for development under the Ministry of Textile’s ‘Linking Textile with Tourism’ initiative, an official release said.
About 18 km from Puri, Raghurajpur heritage village is famous for Odisha’s ancient Pattachitra art, a cloth-based scroll painting. Legendary artist late Jagannath Mohapatra lived in this area and it houses artists practising various traditional arts.
There are about 160 houses in the village with every house filled with crafts and talented artists.
Pattachitra painting is done on specially stiffened seven layers of cloth cut into discs. Traditional craftspersons of Raghurajpur prefer to use organic colours.
Palm-leaf painting is also an important art practised in Raghurajpur.
Under the ‘Linking Textile with Tourism’ initiative, major tourist places are being linked with the handicrafts clusters. Overall development of the eight craft villages has already been taken up, the release said.
Apart from Raghurajpur, the places which have been selected are Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh), Vadaj (Gujarat), Naini (Uttar Pradesh), Anegundi (Karnataka), Mahabalipuram (Tamil Nadu), Taj Ganj (Uttar Pradesh), Amer (Rajasthan).
Through this programme, around 1,000 artisans will be benefitted directly across the country, it said.
In 2000, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) declared Raghurajpur as a ‘heritage village’.
Every member of the family, including women and children, also work as an artist.
Apart from Pattachitra and palm leaf paintings, the artists of Raghurajpur also make masks, coconut crafts, and wooden toys.
Recently, Raghurajpur was in the news when ‘Tree of Life’, a Pattachitra painting done by an artist of this village, was presented by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to the Pope during his visit to Rome.
PTI