The interior decoration of the Golden Temple is a body of work with its own name, and the technique of painting on plaster with gold and mineral colour is called mohrakashi. Its practitioners were called naqqash.
The same trade decorated havelis, palaces and samadhs across Punjab: floral and geometric panels, hunting scenes, portraits of the Gurus and of Ranjit Singh Ji's court, painted on to lime plaster.
Very little survives. Painted rooms were whitewashed over as tastes changed, buildings came down, and the plaster failed. Some of the Golden Temple's own work has been overpainted in successive restorations, which is a live conservation controversy.
The samadhs of Sikh sardars, small domed structures over cremation sites, often carry painted interiors and are the most neglected building type in the state.
The number of trained mohrakashi practitioners is now very small and they are concentrated around Amritsar.
Mohrakashi is the technique: a design drawn in outline and filled with mineral pigment and gold on a prepared plaster ground. Jaratkari is the inlaid stone work and tukri the mirror work.
The interiors at the Golden Temple have been repainted many times and the question of what is original and what is a later copy has never been settled by any published study.
The samadhs of sardars stand in fields and beside roads across the Majha and the Malwa, unprotected, and their painting is going with the plaster.