Designed by Charles Correa, the place provides a pucca building for preservation yet so 'invisible' that it does not impose itself onto the humble village objects. The low lying building of the museum is masked on all sides with tiled roofs and ballis with some mud wall structures. The old carved wooden doors and windows are from Gujarat and Rajastan and the central courtyards with the traditional temple-car is lined with champaand tulsi shrines. A walk through the museum building takes one through the old carved wooden jharokhas, doors, windows, copper utensils and storage jars and perforated iron screens.

All the huts, courtyards and shrines are built with the regional construction material and by the respective village masons, artisans, thatchers and carpenters, giving it the most natural touch. Inside every hut and courtyard, items of day-to-day life are displayed in order to give a glimpse of the wide cultural canvas of India.

There is a specialized library of more than 10,000 books and journals on traditional Indian tribal and rural arts and culture. It also offers reference facilities to research scholars. You can personally interact with the dancers or the craftsmen here to know more about them or their work.

In the centre of the complex is a crafts museum shop selling books, contemporary handicrafts, beads and other traditional items.

The collection of the Museum is over 30 years old and comprises of bronze images, ritual accessories, wood and stone carvings, cane and bamboo work

The most rare and distinctive pieces of the grand collection include a large number of carved wooden figures of the bhutas, the folk deities of coastal Karnataka, the tribal bronze statues fromm Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, a haveli of carved wooden architecture from Gujarat.

The museum invites traditional craftsmen and artists from all over the country to reside at the museum and provide them the opportunities to display their skills, conduct creative experimentation. The craftsmen can market their products and also have a feel of the actual clientele who are usually the foreigners and the tasteful rich of the city. These products are equally popular with art students, artists, designers and the people in the arts and crafts trade.

The collection here in the actual settings, where they originally belong to, and from the people they genuinely come from, is yet another feather to the traditional cap of Delhi.

- Saurabh Sharma