5 Art Studios In North India Bringing Centuries-Old Art Back To Life

India has over 3,000 documented traditional art forms. Fewer than 50 are considered economically viable today. The rest exist somewhere between active practice and endangered status, kept alive by individual craftspeople whose children often choose other livelihoods, by communities whose markets have shrunk, and by the absence of institutional structures that might sustain them.

The reasons are familiar: industrialisation, mass production, and the collapse of royal and temple patronage systems that once funded entire craft traditions. While we are certain many art studios and practitioners are doing important work across the country, we bring you the ones rooted in North India. These art studios have deep community involvement and a clear commitment to longevity over trend.

Morii Design was founded in 2019 by Brinda Dudhat, a Textile Design graduate from the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, with the original intention of bringing traditional textiles into contemporary apparel. The pivot to textile art happened by accident in 2021, when Dudhat framed one of her jackets and posted it on Instagram, which led a Mumbai-based architect to purchase the jacket panels as artworks for a corporate project.

Since then, the studio has produced nearly 900 textile artworks and now collaborates with over 160 artisans across 12 villages in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Bihar. The studio's method is precise: it identifies a craft cluster, studies its traditional pieces, and catalogues every stitch the artisans know before creating new combinations from within that vocabulary.

From eight to ten individual stitches belonging to the Rabari cluster alone, Morii has achieved 67 distinct combinations. The stitch library is currently private, though the studio plans to release portions of it publicly in phases. Every artwork in the catalogue is original and one of a kind.

Molela is a village in the Rajsamand district of Rajasthan, situated on the banks of the Banas River. The terracotta tradition here stretches back, by local lore, over 700 years, with the craft having been practiced by members of the Kumhar caste and passed from father to son across generations. The plaques produced here are hollow relief works, flat on one surface so they can be hung on walls, depicting Hindu deities in vivid natural pigments derived from local stones and minerals.

JamnaLal Kumhar, born in 1967, runs the Kalpataru Terracotta Art, Research and Training Centre in Molela, which has become the primary institutional effort to document and transmit the craft to the next generation. Kumhar received the National Award in 2013 and 2014, and has participated in exhibitions at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and the Frida Steinburger Exhibition in Israel. Works from his studio are held in the collection at Triveni Kala Sangam in New Delhi and the City Palace in Udaipur.

Jaipur Blue Pottery arrived in the city from Persia via the Mughal courts in the early 19th century, when Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II established an art school and invited artisans trained in the craft to settle there. By the 1950s, the tradition had all but disappeared, the result of master potters refusing to share techniques with the next generation and the eventual loss of a craft community.

The revival is attributed to painter and muralist Kripal Singh Shekhawat, who, with the backing of Rajmata Gayatri Devi and social reformer Kamladevi Chattopadhyay, set about rebuilding the practice from the ground up. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1974 and the Shilp Guru by the Government of India in 2002. Kripal Kumbh, the studio he founded in Jaipur, remains in operation today, now run by his wife Sajjan Kanwar and their three daughters. Blue Pottery received a Geographical Indication tag in 2015. Unlike conventional pottery, it is made from a dough of quartz stone powder, powdered glass, multani mitti, borax, and gum, fired at low temperatures and hand-painted with cobalt blue and copper green.

Pichwai painting originated in the 17th century in Nathdwara, a town in Rajasthan whose name translates as Gateway of the Lord. When the idol of Shrinathji was moved from Mathura to Nathdwara to protect it during Mughal invasions, temple artists began creating elaborate painted cloth backdrops to adorn the sanctum during rituals, festivals, and seasonal celebrations. The word Pichwai comes from the Sanskrit words pichh, meaning back, and wai, meaning hanging.

Over four centuries, a community of nearly 300 artists took root in Nathdwara's Chitrakaron Ki Gali, the Lane of Painters, passing the tradition from generation to generation. Traditional Pichwais are painted on starched cotton using mineral pigments derived from emeralds, rubies, and lapis lazuli, with gold and silver leaf applied using fine brushes.

Kuldeepak Soni, a third-generation Pichwai artist from Bhilwara, follows the lineage of his grandfather, Shilp Guru Badrilal Chitrakaar, and his father, Sharad Soni, both National Awardees. Working from his studio in Bhilwara, he continues to use traditional natural pigments and trains and employs local youth in the craft. His works are held in collections by Amitabh Bachchan and Radhika Merchant and have been showcased at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai.

Arthshila Art Studios, established in 2016 within the Parivartan campus in Siwan, Bihar, is an initiative of the Takshila Educational Society and operates as one of the most structured platforms in the country for the revival and documentation of traditional Indian art forms. The studios house dedicated facilities for ceramic, graphic, sculpture, and painting practice, including gas-operated kilns, potter's wheels, etching and litho presses, and a wood-cum-coke fired foundry for metal casting. The studio's approach is built around symposia that bring traditional practitioners and contemporary artists into the same space to work together.

The Takshila Multi-Folk Art Symposium in November 2025 brought together 44 artists representing 20 folk and tribal art traditions, including Gond, Madhubani, Bhil, Baiga, Warli, wood carving, metal casting, and Gamoora mask art. The Folk Metal Art Symposium in 2023, curated by art academician Mushtak Khan, involved 19 artists representing eight bronze casting traditions from five states, producing 111 objects including idols, figurines, jewellery, and lamps.

The studio collaborates with KHOJ and the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art, and its growing collection of over 1,500 works spans nearly 20 Indian indigenous art traditions and over 275 artists from India and abroad.