House Of Kutch Story
A quiet return to Kutch became an ongoing exploration of stories,
material culture, art, and memory.
A quiet return to Kutch became an ongoing exploration of stories, material culture, art, and memory.
House of Kutch began not with a business plan, but with a return home.
House Of Kutch Story
A quiet return to Kutch became an ongoing exploration of stories,
material culture, art, and memory.
House of Kutch began not with a business plan, but with a return home.
Returning to Kutch Was Not Part of
a Plan
Returning to Kutch Was Not Part of a Plan
Nikhil Nagda spent nearly three decades working across animation, storytelling, design, and education. Creativity shaped the way he saw the world, through details, narratives, and the connections between people, places, and culture.
He is a fourth-generation descendant of a Kutchi merchant family from Naliya, Abdasa. His great-grandfather was among the many who left Kutch for Mumbai in the late 1800s, part of a generation that moved towards trade and opportunity, carrying Kutch with them in memory and practice. Since childhood, Nikhil returned to Naliya every year to worship the family's Kuldevi, a ritual that kept the connection alive across generations, even as the family put down roots far from home.
In December 2021, a visit to Naliya was different from all the ones before it. Something shifted. For the first time, he began to see the town not just as a place of belonging, but as a place that was quietly changing, and not for the better. The grand Medi bungalows that had once defined the landscape of Kutch's merchant towns were disappearing. Some were being sold. Others demolished. The carved wooden doors, the old windows, the furniture passed down across generations, all of it being dismantled and sold to antique dealers, piece by piece. These were homes built by families like his own. And they were going.
That December visit started something that has not stopped since Nikhil moved to Kutch, and Travelling through old towns, villages, merchant homes, forts, temples, and forgotten corners of the region, Nikhil began to encounter a side of Kutch that existed beyond the familiar images of the white desert and the celebrated craft traditions. There were stories hidden in fading walls, carved doors, painted interiors, and everyday objects that had once formed part of a rich and connected cultural world. Much of it was disappearing, not dramatically, but quietly, the way things disappear when nobody is watching. Buildings, yes. But also memory, craft, and ways of seeing that had taken generations to develop. What began as curiosity slowly became purpose, a desire to document, understand, and share the stories that shaped Kutch before they faded from view entirely.
What We Explore
House of Kutch explores the heritage, material culture, visual traditions, architecture, craftsmanship, and stories that have shaped Kutch over generations. Some explorations remain research. Some become field notes. Some become artworks. And some take form through objects made in small numbers, allowing fragments of story, memory, and place to continue their journey beyond the studio.
The intention is never to recreate the past. It is to understand it, learn from it, and find meaningful ways to carry parts of it forward.
Kamangiri: An Ongoing Practice
Among the many areas of exploration, one has remained especially close to the studio: Kamangiri, the art of the Kamangars of Kutch
Kamangiri is a painted tradition once found across the interior walls of merchant homes, havelis, forts, and palace interiors across Kutch. The Kamangars were craftsmen of the royal courts, known first for making and decorating bows and ceremonial arms. Over time, their art moved from weapons to walls, bringing the same bold lines and careful craft to the painted interiors of the families who commissioned them. The building and the painting were, in many ways, the same world
For more than three years, Nikhil and Bhagyashree Nagda have been researching this fading visual language, documenting surviving examples across Kutch, studying motifs, techniques, materials, and the stories carried within them. The research has taken them to Tera Fort, the James MacMurdo Bungalow in Anjar, Kalubha Waghela's House in Mundra, the Darbargadh at Naliya, and many other places where fragments still survive in their original form.
This work is not simply about preservation. It took three years to understand the original materials well enough to begin, natural mineral pigments on handcrafted lime-plaster surfaces, a practice that had fallen silent around 1900. The studio now works in this format, currently in small collectible forms, with the full wall as the direction this practice is steadily moving towards.
Kamangiri carries its stories quietly, through colour, through symbols, through observation, and through the hands of the people who created it. We are trying to listen carefully enough to carry those stories forward.
A Shared Studio Practice
As the journey deepened, Bhagyashree Nagda became part of the exploration.
Bhagyashree trained at Sir J. J. School of Art in Mumbai, one of India's most respected fine arts institutions, bringing with her years of practice across painting, visual storytelling, and animation. She came to Kutch not by ancestry but by genuine curiosity and artistic commitment, and made its heritage traditions entirely her own.
Together, the studio became a space for research, experimentation, documentation, and creation, a place where heritage could be studied, interpreted, and thoughtfully reimagined. A Kutchi man, fourth-generation descendant of the merchant community that once commissioned these very traditions, working alongside Bhagyashree Nagda, who came to Kutch not by ancestry but by genuine curiosity and artistic commitment, and made its heritage entirely her own. Both working from within Pragmahal in Bhuj's Darbargadh, the very complex where some of this history still lives in its walls.
The studio goes by H/O Kutch, a mark as much as a name. Stamped on labels, pressed into packaging, carried on every object that leaves Pragmahal. It is how House of Kutch signs its work, the way a merchant once sealed a bale of goods, or a craftsman marked his making. Behind those three letters is a place, a practice, a family lineage, and a tradition being carefully brought back to life. H/O Kutch is still becoming what it set out to be.
Still Learning
House of Kutch remains a work in progress, and that is not a disclaimer, it is the truth of how this kind of research works.
Kamangiri is a vast tradition. The merchant homes and Medis of Kutch are many. The connections between the two are still revealing themselves, slowly, with every visit, every wall, and every conversation with people who carry fragments of this history in their own memories. There are more places to document, more stories to understand, and more of this tradition to bring back into the world.
This research is still evolving, still listening, and still uncovering connections, because some stories reveal themselves slowly, and the ones worth telling usually do.
If you are a member of the Kutchi community, a heritage lover, or someone whose family once lived in or owned a Medi, we welcome you to be part of this ongoing work. Whether through sharing a memory, pointing us to a Medi, a Haveli, a bungalow or contributing in whatever way feels meaningful to you, every connection moves this research forward. Write to us at connect@hokutch.com.
Today, House of Kutch continues to explore, document, create, and share. Rooted in Kutch. Guided by curiosity. Inspired by heritage. And driven by the belief that what is remembered continues to live.
