Our story
Why every jar carries a mark
Every region of India grows something the rest of the country rarely gets to taste. We find it, a woman in that village makes it and approves it, and her village’s mark goes on the jar.
The name
Swaadtaste+kaarthe one who makes it
Swaad is taste. Kaar is the one who makes it, as in kalakaar or chitrakaar. Put together, swaadkaar means an artist of taste. Behind every village mark, the swaadkaar is a woman with a name. You’ll meet her on this page. The lid carries her village, and she carries the craft.
Artists of tasteKeep it alive
For everyone who'd rather keep India's food alive than just remember it.
Somewhere along the way, a lot of us have been forgetting how to eat. Not out of carelessness. Life moved to cities, lunch moved to apps, and the recipes stayed back in the villages that know them by heart. They're still there, and they're still good. Bringing them to your table is less a rescue and more a reunion.
So here's how we think about it. The woman who makes the jar is the expert, and we're lucky she shares it. Her recipe gets the credit. Her time gets fair pay. Her village gets its mark on every lid, and you can scan it to see the whole trail. The more people cook with these jars, the more reasons a village has to keep making them, and that's the hopeful part: a tradition stays alive when it's eaten, not when it's archived.
- Cooked again, not archived
- Her recipe, her credit, her pay
- Drawn in the art of its place
Five regions, five ways to draw
Drawn in the art of her place
India does not draw in one style. So our drawings change with the maker's region: mud and mirrors for Kutch, dot loops for the Udupi coast, Warli for South Gujarat, Gond for Bastar and mountain flags for Spiti.
The drawings on this site are our own simple sketches, made in the visual grammar of Lippan kaam and Rogan (Kutch), rangoli and Chittara (coastal and Malnad Karnataka), Warli (South Gujarat and Maharashtra), Gond (Bastar and central India) and Himalayan Buddhist motifs (Spiti). They are a tribute, not the real thing. The same respect we owe the women who make the food, we owe the communities who made this art: for a real launch, Swaadkaar would commission and pay artists from each of these communities to draw their region’s jars and village marks.
The work, painted
Warli paintings record everyday work in rice-paste white: sowing, harvest, a wedding, a dance. Ours records how achaar gets made, from the shrub to the marked lid. Every village follows its written recipe through these steps, so the jar tastes the same every time.
- 01PickBerries and roots, picked by hand in season.
- 02SaltSalt and turmeric draw the water out.
- 03SunA cloth on the terrace, a few days of sun.
- 04Spice + oilThe masala, measured to the recipe, and mustard oil where it calls for it.
- 05Tie the muslinCloth over the mouth of the barni while it matures.
- 06Mark and sendApproved by her, then the village mark and QR go on the lid.
Swipe to see all six steps →
Warli is the painting of the Warli communities who live in the hills of South Gujarat (Dang and Valsad) and in Palghar and Thane in Maharashtra.
One village. One artist. One mark.
The artists behind the marks
Each of these women lives in a different village, cooks with what grows near her home and approves every batch her village makes. Her name isn’t on the jar. Her village’s mark is.
How a jar gets made
- 01
We find the recipe
A pickle, a sweet or a preserve made with something one region grows well.
- 02
Her village makes it
It’s made in the village where it grows, to one written recipe, with one woman in charge of the taste.
- 03
She approves it
She tastes every batch against the recipe. When it’s right, it gets her village’s mark and a QR that traces it from the field to your table.
- 04
It joins the range
Always on the shelf, with the same taste every time. One jar, chharma, follows its season: picked August to September.