The word itself is a definition: patta, cloth; chitra, picture. Painting on cloth — a tradition of eastern India a thousand years old, in which a length of prepared cotton becomes a canvas, a scripture and, on certain days, a substitute for a god.
✨ Fun fact: Each year at the great Jagannath temple in Puri, the deities are ritually “unwell” and hidden from view for a fortnight. In their absence, the faithful are given darshan of painted pattachitra images instead. For those days, the cloth is the god.
The cloth becomes a canvas
A Pattachitra begins not with paint but with cloth-craft. A piece of cotton is coated with a paste of chalk (or ground tamarind seed) and gum, layered and burnished until it dries into a hard, smooth, eggshell-like surface — the patta, a canvas made by hand from cloth. Only then does the painting begin.
And the colours are ground from the earth: white from conch shell, red from the mineral hingula, yellow from harital, black from lamp soot, blue from indigo. They are laid on in flat, luminous planes and bounded by the confident black outline that is the signature of the style, applied with a brush that may be no more than a few squirrel hairs tied to a twig. When it is finished, the surface is lacquered to protect it. Every stage is the patient, natural-material craft we honour in our own dye-house.
The chitrakars, and the temple
Pattachitra is the art of the Chitrakars — hereditary painter families, in Odisha the Maharana and Mahapatra communities, who for centuries lived in the shadow of the Jagannath temple at Puri and painted for it. The subjects are drawn from devotion: Jagannath with his brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra, Krishna and Radha, the ten avatars of Vishnu, and scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The village of Raghurajpur, near Puri, is a living museum of the craft, where entire households paint.
That a cloth can carry the sacred — can even, for a fortnight, stand in for the deity itself — is an idea we meet again and again: cloth as the right material for the holy, from the linen of the Egyptian temples to the silk kept for an Indian wedding.
The Bengal scroll — a cloth you sing
Bengal has its own branch, and it is wonderful. There the Patua or Chitrakar painters made long vertical scrolls — jorano pat — and travelled village to village, slowly unrolling the cloth panel by panel while singing the story it depicted, a performance called pater gaan. A painted cloth, a song and a storyteller, all at once. It is narrative textile in its purest form — the same instinct that fills the pallu of a Baluchari with scenes, or a Banarasi shikargah with the hunt.
Kin to the painted cloths of India
Pattachitra belongs to a whole family of Indian traditions where the cloth is not woven into pattern but painted — the pen-drawn kalamkari of the south, the ritual Madhubani of Mithila, and more. Woven or painted, the conviction is the same one that runs through everything we make: that cloth is a surface worthy of a civilisation’s finest art.
The thread we love
A canvas made from cloth by hand; colours ground from shell and stone; a black line drawn with squirrel hair; and an image so charged it can stand in for a god — Pattachitra is a reminder that in India, cloth was never just for wearing. It was for worship, for teaching, for telling the oldest stories we have. That reverence for cloth is exactly what we bring to a Banarasi. Explore our handwoven Brocade Fabric collection, or the woven kind of storytelling in Banarasi Motifs & Designs.
Frequently asked questions
What is Pattachitra?
A traditional painting-on-cloth of Odisha and West Bengal, more than a thousand years old and closely tied to the Jagannath temple at Puri. The name means “cloth-picture” in Sanskrit.
How is the cloth prepared?
Cotton cloth is coated with a paste of chalk or tamarind-seed and gum, then burnished to a hard, smooth, eggshell-like surface before painting. Natural pigments are used, and the finished work is lacquered.
Who makes Pattachitra?
Hereditary painter communities called Chitrakars — in Odisha, the Maharana and Mahapatra families — historically working for the temple. The village of Raghurajpur near Puri is especially renowned.
What is a Bengal pat scroll?
In Bengal, Patua painters made long cloth scrolls and unrolled them while singing the depicted story — a performance called pater gaan, combining painted cloth, narrative and song.
Sources & further reading
On Pattachitra, the Chitrakars and the Jagannath tradition, see the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum and museum documentation of Odisha and Bengal painting; the craft village of Raghurajpur; and the Odisha and Bengal Pattachitra Geographical Indications.
More from Khinkhwab Diaries: kalamkari · Madhubani · the Baluchari · Banarasi motifs.
