A craft village is not simply a village where a craft is practised. It is a place where the craft sets the rhythm of the day, where children learn it by watching, and where the skill has stayed put long enough that the technique now carries the village's name. Several of these crafts hold a geographical indication, the legal recognition that a product genuinely belongs to one place. Others survive on nothing more than family memory. Both kinds are listed here.

Raghurajpur, Odisha — pattachitra

A short distance from Puri, Raghurajpur is laid out as two rows of houses facing each other, and in nearly every one of them somebody paints. The craft is pattachitra, painting on cloth stiffened with tamarind paste and chalk, worked in natural pigments with figures outlined in a taut, unbroken line; the subjects are largely from the Jagannath tradition. Households here also make palm-leaf etchings, papier-mache masks and painted wooden toys, and the village supplies ritual paintings used during the Rath Yatra. It was recognised as a heritage crafts village at the turn of the century.

Jitwarpur and Ranti, Bihar — Mithila painting

Mithila or Madhubani painting began as wall and floor painting done by women for weddings and festivals, and moved onto paper only in the twentieth century, when drought relief work encouraged artists to sell their work. Two villages near Madhubani town, Jitwarpur and Ranti, became the centres of that shift, and several of the artists who first won national recognition for the form lived in them. In Jitwarpur a large share of households still paint. The styles differ by community and by family, and the difference in line, fill and subject is visible to anyone who looks at two paintings side by side.

Sualkuchi, Assam — silk weaving

On the north bank of the Brahmaputra, not far from Guwahati, Sualkuchi is a weaving town in the sense that almost everything else there exists to support the looms. It is the main centre for Assam's three silks: golden muga, which is reared nowhere else in the world in any quantity, the white pat, and the coarser, warmer eri. The mekhela chador woven here is what Assamese families buy for weddings and Bihu. Weaving in Sualkuchi is old, associated with royal patronage centuries ago, and the town today supports many thousands of weavers.

Nirona, Kutch, Gujarat — rogan painting

Rogan is painting done with a thread of paint rather than a brush. Castor oil is boiled until it thickens into a residue, mixed with pigment, and then drawn out into a fine elastic strand on a metal stylus and laid onto cloth, often folded to mirror the design onto the other half. In India it survives in the village of Nirona in Kutch, in the hands of one extended Khatri family who have kept it going through generations when there was almost no market for it. Nirona is also known for lacquered woodwork and for copper bells tuned by hand.

Bhoodan Pochampally, Telangana — ikat

The ikat woven here is a tie-and-dye of the yarn rather than the cloth: warp and weft threads are bound and dyed to a plan before a single pick is thrown, so the pattern emerges from the loom already resolved, with the softly feathered edges that mark true ikat. Pochampally ikat holds a geographical indication. The village also carries a second history, having been the place where the Bhoodan land-gift movement began in 1951, which is why its full name is Bhoodan Pochampally. It has been recognised internationally as a model tourism village.

Aranmula, Kerala — the metal mirror

The Aranmula kannadi is a mirror made not of glass but of polished metal alloy, reflecting from its front surface so the image has no second, faint ghost behind it. The exact composition of the alloy and the details of the casting are held closely by a handful of families in Aranmula, on the Pampa river, and are passed within them. The mirror holds a geographical indication and is treated as an auspicious object in Kerala homes. Very few families still make it, and each piece takes considerable labour, which is why it has never become an everyday article.

Molela, Rajasthan — terracotta plaques

Potters at Molela, near Nathdwara, do not throw their best-known work on a wheel. They press river clay into flat, hollow plaques carrying raised figures of local deities, then fire and paint them. The plaques were made for pastoral and tribal communities from the surrounding region and from beyond the Rajasthan border, who came once a year to collect the images their shrines needed. That patronage, more than any market, is what kept the form alive. Molela clay work holds a geographical indication, and the craft has been flagged internationally as one at risk.

Longpi, Manipur — black pottery

In the Tangkhul villages of Longpi in Ukhrul district, pots are made without a potter's wheel and largely without clay in the ordinary sense. Black serpentine stone is broken, pounded and sieved into powder, mixed with a weathered local clay in a fixed proportion, and shaped by hand and with wooden tools. After firing, the surface is rubbed with local leaves, which gives the characteristic dark, slightly gleaming finish. The vessels are strong enough to cook in and are now sold as tableware well outside Manipur, which has given a very old craft an unexpected second market.

Channapatna, Karnataka — lacquered toys

Channapatna, in Ramanagara district, is a small town rather than a hamlet, but its toy-making is village work in character, done in small home workshops across it and the settlements around. Soft ivory wood is turned on a lathe and coloured with lac, a resin applied to the spinning piece so the heat of friction melts it into the grain; vegetable dyes make the colours, which is why the toys are considered safe for small children. The craft is said locally to have been encouraged by Tipu Sultan, who is credited with bringing artisans to teach it. Channapatna toys hold a geographical indication.

Bishnupur, West Bengal — Baluchari weaving

Baluchari silk is woven with figurative panels — scenes from the epics, court and hunting scenes — worked into the pallu and the border, so that the sari carries narrative rather than only pattern. The weave takes its name from a settlement on the Bhagirathi where it first flourished, and moved to Bishnupur in Bankura district after the older centre was lost to the river. There the weavers took motifs from the carved brick temples around them, which is why a Baluchari pallu can look like a temple panel unrolled. It holds a geographical indication.

These crafts do not survive on nostalgia. They survive when someone buys them, when a younger person judges the work worth learning, and when the raw material — a particular clay, a particular tree, a particular silkworm — is still there. Buying directly from a craft village, when you can, is the least complicated form of support there is.