Author: Jo Steel
Published: 4th Mar 2026
Monsoon Raffia: A Tribute to the Women of Hazaribagh
Often it begins with a discovered archive, a singular artist, or a contemporary creative voice whose work speaks to us across time.
For Monsoon Raffia Wallpaper, it was art that ignited this design but not the work of one individual. It was the collective expression of determined resourceful women who paint murals onto the earthen walls of their homes. These women create with what they have: twigs, combs, fingers, charcoal, white clay, living within nature and painting directly from it.
INSPIRATION
WORLD OF INTERIORS
One afternoon in 2014, Michal Silver our Creative Director was reading World of Interiors when she came across a story about the monsoon murals of Hazaribagh in northeast India. In villages north of Delhi, women decorate their mud homes with painted flora, birds and geometric motifs, symbolic patterns drawn in charcoal and natural pigments, created seasonally. When the monsoon rains arrive in June, the paintings are gradually washed away but this doesn’t mean they are deenergised and leave it bear, every October when the monsoon rain settles, the women begin again. Just like we collaborate with artists they collaborate with Mother Earth.
There is something profoundly moving in this gesture, a repetitive routine built on the joy to make things beautiful, despite its temporary position. None of it wasteful, just a natural source of nature’s way of presenting change and flow. This means the art will forever be evolving as the world is around them.
Photo Source from World of Interiors article, Monsoon Murals, written by Leana Pooley, Photography by Deidi von Schaewen
Read the Story
There is something profoundly moving in this gesture, a repetitive routine built on the joy to make things beautiful, despite its temporary position. None of it wasteful, just a natural source of nature’s way of presenting change and flow. This means the art will forever be evolving as the world is around them.
Photo Source from World of Interiors article, Monsoon Murals, written by Leana Pooley, Photography by Deidi von Schaewen
I was deeply moved by these extraordinary women. By their instinct to live with beauty. By the understanding that artistry is not a luxury, but a necessity. It is a tribute to them, to their hands, their rituals, their quiet authorship, that is how Monsoon Raffia was born.
What drew us most to this story was not only the visual language, the fauna, the birds, the symmetry of the geometry, but the dedication behind it. These women are not decorating for spectacle. They are honouring a long cultural and historical ritual of storytelling through surface. Of making interiors come alive with memory, pattern and reverence.
The murals are part of a practice often associated with Khovar and Sohrai traditions, art forms historically linked to celebration, harvest and marriage. Passed from mother to daughter, neighbour to neighbour, they are deeply communal. They speak of land, of animals, of fertility, of protection. They are not signed or especial, yet they are unmistakably personal to each person.
The murals are part of a practice often associated with Khovar and Sohrai traditions, art forms historically linked to celebration, harvest and marriage. Passed from mother to daughter, neighbour to neighbour, they are deeply communal. They speak of land, of animals, of fertility, of protection. They are not signed or especial, yet they are unmistakably personal to each person.
MONSOON WALLPAPER
TRANSLATING THE INSPIRATION
In translating this inspiration into Monsoon Raffia, we wanted to honour that spirit rather than replicate it, of course our wallpapers will never be washed away, so we will never recreate the magic of these seasonal murals. However, the design carries the cadence of hand-drawn linework, the gentle irregularity that gives life to pattern. We thought about the wallpaper base and straight away knew it had to be printed on raffia, the natural texture echoes the tactility of mud walls and organic pigment, grounding the design in something elemental and honest.
The Warren Street Hotel, Firmdale Hotels, Interior Design by Kit Kemp
The Warren Street Hotel, Firmdale Hotels, Interior Design by Kit Kemp
This wallpaper is a recognision to the artistry that is embedded in the world we are surrounded by and the exceptional craft and minds of other women where a lack of things doesn’t mean, live without. They learn as part of their DNA to create with their hands to make something so prepossessing we want to replicate in our busy lives and western homes. There is an understanding that in interior spaces, however humble or grand, deserve narrative and soul.
Interior Design by Hannah Interiors London
Explore Monsoon Wallpaper
Interior Design by Hannah Interiors London
FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
We celebrate the women of Hazaribagh who paint through the seasons, listening to the call of Mother Nature. Who begin again after the rain. Who remind us that the true power of art lies not in standing still, but in its resilience, in the courage to transform, to renew, and to create beauty with unwavering determination.
Monsoon Raffia is a continuation of a story carried by many hands, and proof that art, in all its forms, begins at home.
Monsoon Raffia is a continuation of a story carried by many hands, and proof that art, in all its forms, begins at home.