Indra Jātrā

For eight nights each year the valley keeps Indra Jātrā: oil lamps along the temple plinths, the masked Lakhe dancing through the crowd, and the chariot of the Kumari drawn through Patan and Kathmandu. It is the Newar calendar at its most luminous.

This collection answers that light. Jewel-toned grounds — vermilion, deep indigo, marigold — are worked with gold-wrapped thread in radiating rosettes drawn from temple woodcarving and ritual mandalas. The embroidery is meant to catch lamplight the way the festival's gilt masks do.

It closes the monograph as the festival closes the season: the fullest, most ornamented statement of where this work comes from.