Kashmir’s papier-mâché tradition arrived with a 15th-century mystic, Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani, and the craft his followers brought from Persia — layers of paper pulp, shaped over a mould, dried, then hand-painted in patterns of flowers, chinar leaves, and paisley that still define the style today.
A single piece — a bowl, a box, a Christmas ornament — passes through several hands before it’s finished: one person builds the base shape, another applies the gesso coating that gives it its smooth surface, and a third does the actual painting, often freehand, using brushes made from cat’s hair for the finest lines.
Workshops tucked into the lanes around the old city in Srinagar still work this way, and most will let you watch — the gold leaf finishing on a high-end piece, added last, is the step worth timing your visit around.
Good to know: genuine hand-painted pieces cost more and take longer to make than machine-stencilled ones sold in bulk tourist shops — ask to see the base layer if you want to check it’s genuine papier-mâché and not moulded plastic.