Born in 1949 Tilak Gitai hails from the second generation of royal court painter patronized by the rulers of Bikaner. He has done his B.F.A. from the University of Delhi.

He specializes in Indian traditional Miniature paintings like Mughal, Rajasthani and Phadi paintings etc. He is also an all round Master Craftsman, designer and sculptor.

He has demonstrated cum exhibited his paintings in the prestigious Festival of India held at Augsburg Germany in1985, at Geneva-Zurich and Basel-Switzerland in 1987 and at Earls Court-London in November 2001.

He has done a great research and works on the ancient Ragamala paintings and added with his own imagination and creativity

the missing portions to these paintings without which, in essence, these paintings were incomplete. His one set of Ragamala

paintings on Ivory is displayed at Muse'e d'enthnographie-Geneva.

His collections of paintings are also kept at Victoria Albert Museum-London; National Museum of Ethnology-Osaka Japan; National Crafts Museum-New Delhi. The US. President Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea Clinton also appreciated his work on Ragamala during their visit to Jaipur in March 2000 and April 2001. His exhibitions on Ragamala-The Missing Link was exhibited at. Manoir de la Ville de Martigny-Switzerland --1997· Muse'e d'ethnographie de Gene've --1998 respectively where his book on Ragamala-The Missing Link was also

inaugurated by the ambassador of India.

He makes paintings on different surfaces like old handmade paper, fine silk and wall Murals etc. and also restores the old miniature paintings. He makes his own colors from precious, semi-precious stones, minerals and herbs. Real gold and silver colors are made from gold and silver leaf. He also makes his own brushes from squirrel's hairs.

During his illustrious career he got many prizes and awards for his originality and artistic brilliance like:

• National Award from the President of India - 1982
• Rajasthan Shiromani Award - 1991
• Kalamani Award -Suraj Kund-1991
• Maharana Sajjan Singh Award - 1992
• India's Independence Golden Jubilee Award - 1997

Mr Gitai with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi

With the inspiration from Tanjore style (South India) and in order to bring more splendors in the 18th Century religious paintings in Jaipur Style started the Embossed Gold work which is more miniature in comparison to those of Tanjore Paintings.

For the first time we have also done the inlay & enameling in these paintings which is never done before in these type of paintings.

Process of making the Emboss Miniature Paintings

First of all we decide where to do emboss golden work through proper planning. Later we coat special lime stone slowly & slowly layer after layer on the particular place where the emboss work have to be done. When it took the required shape we apply gold as the base colour on embossed work and for this purpose we use 24 carat gold leaf.

Like this we apply liquid enamel colour where ever the enameling is required. On the whole it required great patience and skill which take lots of time. The colours used in the paintings are prepared from natural stone, minerals and herbs.