Athangudi Handmade Tile Workshops

Athangudi is a small village of lime-washed walls and unhurried lanes a short drive northwest of Karaikudi, in Tamil Nadu's Sivaganga district, and it has given its name to one of India's most recognisable floor surfaces.

• The Athangudi tile — a hand-poured cement tile with a glassy sheen and bold geometric or floral motifs in mustard, oxide red, indigo, jade and cream — came into its own covering the vast halls and courtyards of Chettinad's merchant mansions, and it is still made here in low-roofed working sheds rather than in any factory.
• There is no ticket counter, no gallery and no formal guided circuit.
• What a visitor gets instead is the better thing: a living craft village where the tile underfoot in the mansion you toured that morning was very likely poured by hand a few hundred metres away.
• The method is unusually simple to watch and unusually hard to master.
• A square of ordinary plate glass is laid on a bench and framed with a metal border; onto it goes a thin patterned stencil, into whose compartments the artisan ladles a coloured slurry of white cement, oxide pigment and water, one shade at a time, guided almost entirely by muscle memory.
• The stencil is lifted clear in a single clean movement, a dry mix of cement and locally quarried sand is sifted over the wet design to draw off moisture, a coarser sand-and-cement backing is packed on top, and the sandwich is pressed and set aside.
• Roughly a day later the glass sheet is peeled away and the tile emerges with the mirror-smooth face that only glass can give it — which is why a genuine Athangudi tile is never machine-polished.
• The pieces are then cured in water for about a week to ten days and sun-dried before they are strong enough to lay and walk on.
• Most units are happy for respectful visitors to watch during working hours, but these are workplaces, not attractions: ask before entering or photographing people, keep out of the pouring bay and away from the curing tanks, and come mid-morning on a weekday when the benches are actually in use.
• Sample boards are usually propped against a wall, tiles are sold by the square foot, and the workshops are experienced at crating orders for transport across India.
• Some of the village's larger old houses are privately owned and may or may not be open on the day you arrive; where a caretaker does show you round, a small tip is customary and access is entirely at the family's discretion, so ask locally rather than assuming.
• The stop pairs naturally with the mansion streets of Kanadukathan, the antique lanes of Karaikudi, and the Pillaiyarpatti and Kundrakudi temples, and from Rameswaram it is best folded into a full-day Chettinad excursion.
• There is no food at the sheds themselves — not even a tea stall you can rely on — so plan meals around Karaikudi town, about a quarter of an hour away.
• One honest caution: Chettinad's towns are nationally known for non-vegetarian cooking and many "meals hotels" are multi-cuisine, so check that the board actually says pure vegetarian or shuddh shakahari, and ask whether the kitchen is separate, before you order.
• Pure-veg meals hotels do exist in good number and serve the classic banana-leaf lunch of rice with sambar, rasam, more kuzhambu, poriyal, appalam and curd, often with paruppu urundai kuzhambu, the lentil-dumpling gravy that is Chettinad's great vegetarian signature.
• Mornings and evenings belong to tiffin: idiyappam with kadalai kurma, kuzhi paniyaram, idli, ulundu vadai and strong filter coffee.
• Sweet shops in Karaikudi and neighbouring Kottaiyur sell kandarappam, kavuni arisi, seeyam and ukkarai to carry away, and the Pillaiyarpatti and Kundrakudi temples run simple prasadam and annadhanam counters.
• Carry your own water — the sheds are hot and shadeless by midday.