Cuttack Tarakasi Silver Filigree Craft Odisha

Cuttack in Odisha is the home of Tarakasi — India's finest silver filigree craft — in which artisans from the Rupakar and Swarnakar communities draw ultra-fine silver wire of 0.1-0.3mm diameter and twist, coil, and solder it into intricate lace-like frames, deities, ornamental boxes, flowers, and the Jagannath chariots that are the iconic form of Cuttack filigree. The craft requires sterling silver (92.5% pure) drawn through a series of progressively finer holes in a steel draw plate, then worked using hand tools including tweezers, cutters, and spirit lamp soldering torches to assemble thousands of individual wire coils into a single piece without visible joins. A pair of Tarakasi earrings may contain 10,000 individual wire coils and take 40 hours to complete. Cuttack Tarakasi holds a GI tag and is the only Indian filigree tradition operating at sub-millimetre wire gauges. The Odisha State Cooperative Handicrafts Corporation markets Tarakasi internationally, and the craft is exported to Italy, Germany, and Japan where collectors prize it alongside Maltese and Portuguese silver lace traditions.