Bareilly
— — the bazaar that gave the jhumka its song.
Not only on a wall.
“A working city of Rohilkhand, on the Ramganga at the foot of the Kumaon hills. Founded in 1537 and shaped under the Rohilla Afghans in the eighteenth century, it is known across India for its jhumka earrings, its cane furniture, and its kite-flying manjha. The film songs do the rest of the introducing, and have since 1966.
Bareilly, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Bareilly stands on the Ramganga River in the western half of Uttar Pradesh, about two hundred fifty kilometres east of Delhi at the southern edge of the Kumaon foothills. Founded in 1537 by Bas Deo and Barel Deo, two sons of a Rajput chief, it became the capital of the Rohilla Afghan state in the eighteenth century before passing to the British in 1801. The metropolitan population is around one million, anchored by a cantonment, a university, and one of the largest grain markets of the upper Doab.
Bareilly reaches Indian popular culture through the bazaar. The 1966 film Mera Saaya carried the song Jhumka gira re, Bareilly ke bazaar mein, which made the city's earring markets a national reference. Sixty years on, the line still anchors weddings and playlists across South Asia, and the 2017 film Bareilly Ki Barfi extended the city's name into another generation. The actual jhumka workshops cluster around the Chaupula and Kotwali markets in the old quarter, where the craft is still hand-finished daily.
Bareilly Junction connects to Delhi in around four to five hours by train and to Lucknow in four. The old city centres on Kotwali and the Chaupula crossing, where the jhumka and cane-furniture markets work daily except Sunday. The dargah of Hazrat Shah Sharafat Miyan in the cantonment draws pilgrims in spring; the Alakhnath and Trivati Nath temples mark the older Hindu quarters. The cane-furniture lanes run busiest in autumn, in the weeks before Diwali, when family orders come in from across the north.