A century-old clay doll tradition in Jaynagar-Majilpur, South 24 Parganas in West Bengal, contains the specimens of three generations retrospectively from the 1940s till now, where a large portion of that was fashioned by Manmathanath Das (1906–1986) takes in sundry themes from Hindu iconic deities to regional gods, from the nineteenth-century Babu image to the scenes from quotidian village life. Under a thin shadow of Kalighat Painting and canonical sculptural posture, Manmathanath’s clay dolls are evident in their synthesis of Bengal’s Pata painting and clay doll form. Although discussing the clay dolls of Jaynagar-Majilpur, this article has tried to discover the trajectory of the self-discovery of post-colonial Indian art and craft appreciation, focusing on its design aspect. Against the asperse of British critics on Indian art, nineteenth-century Indian intellectuals like Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Sister Nivedita penned their voices to divulge the saga of Indian art hinging on the intramural spirituality of Ancient Indian art. As they were literary scholars, in their arguments, they, to underline Indian meditative spirituality, overlooked the structural designing excellence of Indian art, especially Indian folk art. Later, when practitioners like Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose and their students like K.G Subramanyan tried to discover the Indianness of Indian art in its design, a new area of aesthetic understanding opened up. They found a designing affinity among all forms of Indian art. This finding gave birth to a fresh group of connoisseurs, who, with their reinvigorated qualified eyes, interpreted Indian art, especially post-colonial folk craft design, in a new light.