Description#
Koftgari is the Indian damascening tradition, the craft of overlaying fine gold wire, and sometimes silver, onto a steel ground. The smith cross-hatches the steel with a fine file, lays drawn gold wire into the hatching, and burnishes it so the soft metal keys permanently into the harder ground. The finished surface reads as gold pattern against blued or blackened steel, worked at the scale of arabesque, scroll, and floral lattice.
Cultural context#
Koftgari carried Persian metalworking vocabulary into the Rajput and Mughal courts and settled most durably in Rajasthan, where Sikar and the wider Shekhawati region remain associated with the craft alongside Udaipur and Alwar. Its historical home was the armoury, where sword hilts, shield bosses, daggers, and armour carried koftgari as both ornament and mark of status. As demand for decorated weaponry fell away, the craft moved onto decorative and presentation objects while keeping its arms-and-armour vocabulary.
Design applications#
Koftgari belongs to the same metal-decoration family as bidriware yet inverts its terms. Bidri sets silver into a blackened zinc-alloy ground; koftgari overlays gold onto hatched steel. Read side by side the two make the clearest teaching pair in the metalwork set, a worked example for the eye-test that separates inlay from overlay and silver-on-black from gold-on-steel. The craft reads best at object and detail scale where the gold-on-steel register can hold material weight.
No verified DC project engagement is currently on record for this craft.