Preservation and restoration

Preserving India's artistic heritage

t the end of the 1980s, a young woman purchased a slightly damaged print by the 19th century painter and printmaker Raja Ravi Varma for Rs 500. “I remember saying ‘this is a very beautiful image’,” she recalled later. “I’d never seen anything like it... I felt like looking out for more.” Given Ravi Varma’s status as a pioneer of mass produced imagery in India, it was a fitting introduction. In the following decades,…