"a rich, creative, and forceful art"

“In the peace and quiet seclusion of the countryside the village community evolved a culture of its own out of the steady flow of its own life and of nature around it. […] Out of a million coloured strands of tradition filled with song and verse, legnds, myths, native romances and episodes, from the substance of the every day life of the community, and out of nature’s own rich storehouse, was woven a rich, creative and forceful art.”

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Indian Handicrafts (1963), in Adamson, Glenn (ed) (2010), The Craft Reader, Berg, Oxford, New York, p.192