Glimpses of Raghurajpur: UNESCO The Heritage Craft Village of Odisha

Raghurajpur Artists Village located in Odisha. This village is 55 Km far away from the capital city of Bhubneswar & 10 Km away from Puri. Raghurajpur is a UNESCO heritage village. This village is known to be the home for various crafts like Pattachitra, Stone & Wood carving, Papeir mache masks and many such crafts. Raghurajpur is very popular for hand made paintings. This village is also birthplace of  local Odissi dance named "Gotipua Dance"

Raghurajpur unique handmade paintings specially the playing cards, are on display in museum across the world. Once you reached in this village you look around colorful houses where-ever your's eyes catches. The houses are painted with beautiful design paintings on the house walls. These wall arts attract tourist to pay a visit to this unique craft village. The houses painting creativity some like as wow. I don't have words to explain the beauty and talent of artisans. In this village every family have a artist. 

To know as the keepers of Odisha's ancient Pattachitra Art largely due to late Jagannath Mohapatra (He was the winner of President's of India Award) who lived here. So that all the village peoples do the practicing of various traditional arts and paintings. 

The Pattachitra Art form is used to decorate none other the Lord of the universe to Lord Jagannath and his siblings. The art attachment with the holy trinity elevated the art form helped it gain prominence.

The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage "INTACH" panelist select this village for 02 year to research about this village local peoples that how the villagers show their creativity, more then 100 houses in this village and every family participate in this campaign in 1998. After 02 years of hard work in 2000 this was the first heritage village developed in India, which was known "Raghurajpur - The Heritage Craft Village"   

The Pattachitra paintings are made over a piece of cloth, first painted with a mixture of chalk and gum. Over the prepared surface, colorful intricate images of various God & Goddess depicting the mythological scenes. In the painting artists use natural mineral color and vegetables dyes in their paintings. The Raghurajpur village artists not only famous in the world for Pattachitra Art but also very popular in other form  of design and paintings. 

Palm-Leaf Painting: - It is said that the Palm Leaf painting originated when written communication began. In Odhisha coastal area stretched very long where lot of Palm tree. The Artist design on Palm leaf, they cut leaf in same sizes and held together with two wooden plank cover stringed through hole in the center, then they prefix and stitching after it dried then they painted in different colors.