Hastkala: A Living Archive Of Indian Handicrafts

Hastkala (हस्तकला, “handicraft”) helps people discover Indian handicrafts and try them at home. You read about a craft, take a short quiz to find one that suits you, and follow a step-by-step activity to make something yourself.

What it does

Crafts. 36 crafts with their history and how they’re made, filterable by state, material and popularity.
Activities. 86 projects you can do at home, filterable by skill, time, effort and budget.
Steps with pictures. Each activity has steps, tips, a materials list with prices and buy links for India or the US, and videos.
Hobby Finder. Seven quick questions, then three activities to start with.
English and Hindi. Switch languages at any time.
Three themes. Museum, folk and craft, each in light and dark.

Team

Asritha Nagubandi, Poornima Chaturvedula and Jayneel: subject matter experts. Idea, requirements, design direction and craft knowledge.
Keshav Lingala: development. Architecture, features and infrastructure.

Activities

The activities page, with filters for skill, time, effort, complexity and budget

An activity page: the craft behind it, the materials with prices, and an India or US price toggle

A step with its tip and picture

Crafts

A craft page for Bidriware

Languages And Themes

The same activity in Hindi

An activity on a phone, in the folk theme's dark mode

How It’s Built

It’s a React and TypeScript app, with Supabase for the database, sign-in and storage, hosted on Firebase. Pages are prerendered, so they load fast and show up in search, and it runs on free tiers.

The craft and activity text was drafted with AI and is being reviewed by the experts, who edit it in the app’s own admin console. Cover images and step pictures were generated with ComfyUI on my home server and are labelled as AI-generated on the site. Inspiration photos are credited where they appear.

What’s Next

Community posts, workshop booking and artisan profiles are built but hidden until they’re ready to launch.