Unique & Awesome Patta Chitras : our painted culture

Patta means a well prepared surface ready for painting. Chitra means painting. Therefore Patta Chitras of Odisha mean Odishan pictorial art on a specially prepared surface. Here are some of my personal collections of  PATTA CHITRAS or patta paintings.   This is traditional cloth(may be tasar or canvas)based scroll painting of Raghurajpur ( a heritage craft village, near Puri, Odisha, India) artisans .Now a days , these patta paintings are being done  in different parts of Odisha.I hope…you all culture loving  people will be fascinated by these art pieces made by our skillful artisans. Just having a glance on these pattachitras is a pure visual bliss.

Pattachitras are painted on Cloth treated with a coat of paste of “organic gum” and other ingredients. The gum is prepared by mixing up tamarind seed paste and chalk powder…The fundamental five colours are prepared by the following way.

White Colour – Sea Shell powder

Red Colour – Stone/ a kind of soil

Blue Colour – Khandneel stone

Yellow Colour – from a Hingul stone that can be available only in winters when the temperature is low as it is combustible at high temperature

Black Colour – Soot of oil lamps/ burnt coconut shell 

Other colours are prepared by mixing up the above mentioned colours in different proportions.. The brush is prepared by using mongoose😌 hairs…

The tradition of patta painting has gone through various changes . Now a days  the patta painting is also being done on the surface of coconut , betel nut, wooden box etc.

Here I would like to share with my readers that there lies a unique playing card called ‘Ganjapa ‘. That is a piece of Patta chitra as well as a playing card, both rolled into one.

Yesteryear playing cards ‘Ganjapa’ still exist in at least a few pockets of Odisha. These are still being made by the artisans belonging to a few specific areas like Raghurajpur ( Heritage crafts village near Chandan pur, Puri, Odisha), Dandasahi ,  Paralakhemundi , Ganjam etc… Even today some elderly people remain indulged in playing GANJAPA during indolent afternoons particularly in few pockets of deep interior rural belts of Puri and Ganjam districts.

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Here I am talking about another example of Pattachitra called Ushakothi painted clay pot. Patta Chitras have been painted on these huge clay pots. Such pots encompass stories from epics and narrate stories of our Gods and Goddesses from our legends . Traditionally these huge clay pots used to be a part of the groom’s procession during marriage ceremonies. You can go through several such antiquities made of clay in the following article.

Dr. Manoj Mishra, lunarsecstasy@gmail.com