Journal Archive

Anees Ahmed S/o Late Mr.Ghanil Ahmed learned the craft of bidri from his father. According to the artisan the craft has been in practice for over 400 years created at the time of the Bahmani Dynasty. Even though Anees is a graduate his interest in the craft tradition led him to make bidriware his career. This has not been an easy decision to make and keep in the face of diminishing markets. Earlier in his area more than 10 families participated in the craft but today only 2 families remain while others have moved to more gainful employment. Bidri is a manually intensive craft. It is a time consuming, and requires concentration and patience. And yet Anees claims that the joy he gets from his work makes him pursue it passionately despite the hardships and limitations. History Hyderabad boasts of one of the finest forms of creativity- the Bidri craft. Of all the beautiful gold and silver inlay work in the Deccan there is nothing known to be so individually appealing as Bidri work with its vivid contrast of dull black and lustrous silver. Bidri once practiced in many parts of India, today exists only in Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh and Bidar in Karnataka. But it is no exaggeration that the finest quality Bidriware is now produced in Hyderabad, while Bidar can lay claim to being the original home of this craft- Bidri is the adjectival form of Bidar.

It is a 400 years-old craft. The origins of Bidriware are uncertain. The technique is believed to have originated from Persia where steel and copper objects were decorated with gold and silver inlay. The credit for developing this craft is the country is given to the Mughal rulers during whose reign the Persian crafts and craftsmen were introduced into India. The use of Zinc as a primary metal however, is peculiar to India. Over the last 180 years or so, a tradition has developed linking it with the Bahamani dynasty of the Deccan. According to the story, the technique was introduced to the Bahmani kingdom from Iran (Via Iraq, Ajmer and Bijapur) and Alauddin Bahmani II took craftsmen from Bijapur where they were producing work of this sort and established them at Bidar, later the capital of the Bahmani kingdom. But even according to this account, when the Deccan was conquered by the Mughal emperor, north Indian officials set up permanent establishments and with political stability came patronage of the arts. The presence of Mughal and Rajput patrons and painters in the Deccan produced a revolution in Bijapuri taste, and with the fall of Bidar, Bijapur and Golconda, Mughal influence was all-pervasive. Thus the contribution of the Mughals to the present from of Bidriware is significant.

There are three main forms of bidriware according to the depth of embedding and the quality of the metal affixed to the surface. These are known as the nashan (deeply cut work) zar nashan (raised work) and tarkashi (wire inlay work). Raw Material The basic metal of this craft is an alloy of Zinc and Copper mixed in the proportion of 16:1. The melting temperature of this metal alloy is 800°F. Such an alloy is known as the ‘white alloy’ because the ratio of copper used is very little. Copper is mixed with zinc in the above stated proportion of 1:16 to provide the required base for being turned jet black when subjected to the ultimate oxidization process.

Process The technical processes involved in the making of bidriware are complex and have different stages. The first stage is the sand casting stage. From ordinary soil matted with castor oil and resin, a mould is formed. After the mould is prepared, the molten metal alloy is poured into it. It is said that in olden days wax casting was used which has since been given up because of its arduous nature. The second stage is filing. Since the surface of a newly cast piece is rough, it is made smooth with files and scrapers and sandpaper. Then a superficial layer of black is applied on the surface of the article by rubbing it with a solution of copper sulphate. This makes it easier for the artist to draw the design on it, which becomes visible on a black surface.

The third stage is that of designing. All the designs are drawn free hand. There are two types of inlay work-a) Wire work and b) sheet work. Floral designs mainly need silver sheet. In the sheet work again there are two sub-divisions – the Mehtabi design where the entire background is white and the design is black and the Aftabi where it is vice-versa (These names are Persian origin Mehtabi means Moon and the Aftabi means the Sun). The phooljali (flowering vine) design is the most popular and difficult to execute. The design is drawn with the help of a sharp metal stylus.

The next stage is engraving. After the design is drawn it is entirely engraved by steel chisels designed by the artisans themselves and which are not available anywhere in the market. With the Bidri piece firmly fixed on a waxed stone or held in a vase, the craftsman engraves the design. The fifth stage is the extremely intricate one of inlaying. Silver in the shape of wire or sheet is hammered into the grooves of the design. Then smooth filing is done with sandpaper or files or with the help of a buffing machine. After filing, the whole surface becomes white once again since the black colour is temporary and the silver work is hardly distinguishable.

In the final stage, the article is subjected to a process of oxidation peculiar to the Bidri craft. For this, a particular kind of sand taken from the walls and ceilings of 200 to 300 year old mud buildings is mixed with sal ammoniac in the proportion 10:1 and the prepared paste is gently applied to the surface of articles to give a magical effect. The zinc and copper background turns black while the silver portion remains unaffected. Before the oxidization process, the articles are gently heated on an oven. Finally coconut oil or peanut oil or any vegetable oil is applied to the article to render the black portions bright and deep. Only pure silver (99 per cent) should be used so that it is not tarnished in oxidization. When gold is inlaid it is known as Persian work for which there is not much demand – not only because of the high prices but also because gold inlaid Bidriware is not as elegant as its silver counterpart.

Production and Potential The production of Bidriware in Hyderabad city is estimated to be around 75 to 80 lakhs, per annum, with a scope to increase the production by another 25%. Bidri products include a diverse range of objects including huqqa bases, bowls, boxes, candle stands, trays, ashtrays, vases, jewelry and buttons. The motifs vary from floral arabesques and intricately patterned leaves and flowers to geometric designs. Necessary marketing intelligence and scientific analysis of market trends and demand forecast could help stream line the production in such away that the shelf life of the product can minimized. Anees too highlighted the need for a market strategy to augment craft production. Further reading: Development Commissioner (Handicrafts). Bidriware of Hyderabad. A Special Report. Warangal.

6th: Its 8 p.m. and we’re finally in the train to Muzaffarpur - en route to Bhusara for the Asia Society Sujni Design Workshop. As always there has been this crazy rush getting ready - with no proper time to psyche oneself into a proper state of creative inspiration and calm. The last three days I have been between Dastkar and the Crafts Council of India NGO meet, lumbered (the usual consequence of being punctual, literate and with a fairly good memory) with the task of moderating the Sub Committee on Policy, writing the minutes, and drafting the Memo to the Government. Somehow, in between, I bought threads and went fabric hunting for my sujni quilts - I’d had this fantasy of doing them on typical Bihar handloom gamcha material with the narrow rudraksha border running round the edges. Past experience suggested that MVSS would have no fabric - and that any threads would be leftovers, in those virulent shades of puce, pink, and turquoise that no one, even they, could want to use! Predictably, the Bihar Emporium didn’t have handloom gamchas and I eventually bought them from the Orissa one. Amrapalli, the Bihar Emporium (meant to be a showcase exclusively for handicrafts & handlooms from Bihar) did have Tangail sarees from Bengal, polyester raw silk, and - quite inexplicably - fiberglass crash helmets! I’d promised myself that today I would not go into office, and would have a peaceful leisurely, domestic time, getting my thoughts together. Instead there was a hasty visit to the bank (the electrician arrived with a huge bill for mending the geyser) and to the optician to collect my new reading glasses, a lengthy fax to London re: the products for the 50 Years of Indian Craft Exhibition, a memo to the Ministry of Culture on the importance of craft documentation, and a mad dash to Dastkar to scream at Zainuddin the carpenter for his misdeeds in the shelving for the new Dastkar shop - all this interspersed with jotting down last minute memos to the office and doing my packing. One always feels nervous of leaving something behind - Bhusara is an hour and a half away from the nearest town and certainly can’t provide graph paper, slide film, or tampons! I’d just got everything tucked away tightly but neatly and zipped up the last bag when Bhupinder arrived from the office with a couple of dozen boxes of embroidery threads - a last minute fax SOS from Kailashji for shades needed for the Sue Conway order. Anyway, now we are off. Bihar induces mixed feelings - it such a confused sad place, and the mixture of fatalistic apathy in the villages and mindless violence in the towns is depressing. But sujni itself is a lovely craft, and North Bihar physically a rather beautiful, gentle place - all green, undulating groves and streams. 7th: It’s 3 o’clock and we should have been chugging into Muzaffarpur Station, but the train (somewhat misleadingly called Super Fast Express) is already 4 hours late - with numerous unscheduled stops. Red paan spittle in the wash basin tells one that we have crossed the Bihar State border! Ambika and I have our 4 seater compartment to ourselves. A mixed blessing - we can spread out, but lack the entertainment of observing our travelling companions (and sharing their food!). Nevertheless, since voice levels are high, one can hear that politics and the coming elections are high on everyone’s conversational agenda. Prices of votes and seats are claimed to go into lakhs and crores and (though the Bihari accent make’s the rising stress at the end of each sentence sound like a question) there seems a universal affectionate and admiring perception of Laloo Prasad as some sort of Robin Hood hero. Sleep seems the safest option. Later: We were met at Muzaffarpur by Nirmala, Kailashji and the mustachioed Satya Narain: patiently waiting for 4 ½ hours at the station. As always the auto rickshaw was piled high with provisions and fabric, added to by our own luggage - we made the jerky, pot-holed journey to Bhusara with our knees to our chins! It was too dark to see much of the Bihar landscape, but I was struck once again by its gentle rhythms and green fertility - suggesting nothing of the underlying poverty and violence. Ambika, (on her first visit to rural Bihar), was equally struck by the little groups, squatting in semi-circles all along the roadside, swigging the ubiquitous bottles of milky local country liquor stacked round them. By the time we arrive at Bhusara it is time for dinner and bed - in the same upstairs room Veronica and I had shared on our last trip, though there are no blackboards with exhortations to safe sex this time! An extra 2 wooden takat beds had been squeezed in, propped up on bricks to be the same height. Reena Mohan and her crew of 4 are arriving tomorrow and Nirmala is off to Patna at dawn to collect them. They are to make a video film on sujni and the women for the Asia Society. It is much less cold than New Year’s Eve 96, when we were here last year; without the ceaseless ghostly rattle and squeak of the December winds against wooden shutters. Ambika lays out her music cassettes and I my book, but we are asleep within minutes. 8th: Up at dawn to make use of the outside loo before everyone else queues up! Then tea and a bucket bath of nicely bracing well water before the inevitable aloo bhujia/roti breakfast. Despite stern warnings, the women amble slowly in, 10 o clock onwards. Another three quarters of an hour goes in greetings and chat; but from tonight 6 or 7 of the village leaders will spend the night here so that we can work late and start early - not dictated to by the demands of bus timings and cooking family dinners. Their agreeing to this is a major breakthrough. Anju, Archana, and Vibha too, seem peppy and confident: ready to take much more initiative, enthusiastic about trying something new. We don’t feel the absence of Nirmala at all. Kailashji too, keeps his distance, confining his authority to the logistics of finance, transport, and meals. As always, the women are keenly interested in our clothes: Ambika’s kurta is given to the tailor to copy, Anju traces my current embroidery, and Vibha immediately begins knitting a sweater like mine! Flattering but scary being a role model. We settle down together to discuss the object of the workshop - the Asia Society quilts as a means to learn how to combine colours, motifs and designs and make the women more participant in the creative process. Along with the quilts we want to make other products - garments, accessories, soft furnishings - to add diversity to the MVSS sujni range. The products developed by us last time have sold well, but the cut and shape of the kurtas and jackets have turned out quite different from the original samples, and many styles have not gone into production. It is not just the problem of finding and training a good tailor: Availability of the right raw material and the cash flow to buy it and make payments to the women remains a major stumbling block. Somehow, despite this and the appallingly low earnings (a 100 or so rupees a month per woman), the motivation and involvement of both the sujni embroiderers and the organisation has grown. They are still passive and hesitant, but when pushed they do respond. And they are extraordinarily and demonstratively affectionate - somehow the intervening Delhi workshops and Bazaars and our being back again in Bhusara seems to have convinced them of Dastkar’s sincerity and staying power. As we sit together, talk, and measure, cut, and stitch together the base fabric for the quilts, I take a look at the other quilts being made for the Asia Society. It will give me an idea of the direction mine should take. I have deliberately not thought too much about the designs as I want them to develop spontaneously. I see only a few of the quilts (the others are being worked on in other villages and are inaccessible.) The large Asia Society quilts (and the others being made for Sue Conway and the Canadian order) are very much in the ADITHI mode: Design, aesthetic, and even function being replaced by social message. Though some attempt has been made to coordinate colours and forms, and vary the sizes and staccato rhythm of little figures scattered ad-hoc all over the quilt (the very large feet of some of the protagonists was explained to me as a special request from Molly!), and introduce some innovative detailing, I still find them rather contrived and polemic - out of the head of an earnest activist rather than a rural craftswoman’s psyche. There is one particularly weird one, on AIDS - with wasted figures, doctors with syringes and sickle shaped knives, and a border of huge, ochre yellow condoms! I personally can’t think of anything less conducive to the tranquil enjoyment of the two functions one normally associates with quilts and bed - i.e. slumber and sex! Earlier designers from ADITHI have had an interesting challenge (much as we did in our Ranthambhore Project) in trying to create a whole new design idiom for sujni; since the original craft tradition has died without being documented and the women are not yet equipped to become their own designers. But I have great reservations about their solution. Not so much in their wholesale adoption of the kantha pictorial quilt tradition of Bengal (the two techniques and cultures have much in common) but in their treating the sujni quilt as a kind of admonitory poster, rather than a functional and decorative household accessory. The sujni/kantha technique lends itself to pictorial story telling but social and political rhetoric should also be pleasurable viewing! An occasional freak might buy a condom quilt crafted in rural Bihar as an interesting, one-off, cultural phenomenon, but when hundred of women in dozens of villages have both the need and capability to earn from sujni, there is an imperative to develop products with a more universal appeal - products that are marketable, functional, and fun. I set the women to drawing the images for the first quilt; first discussing the content and then dividing them into 6 different groups, giving them each large sheets of newsprint. The quilt was to show the changing stages of a woman’s life. Each group worked on the pictorial images for one stage of life - birth, childhood, marriage, family, widowhood and death – encouraged to discuss and draw on their own experience and inspiration, rather than an NGO fantasy! Many of the women said that they could not draw - wanting Archana, Anju, or Nirmala Devi to draw for them - but I deliberately excluded them and Vibha from the groups. The five of us worked on getting the quilt bases together while Ambika’s role was to wander around the groups, encouraging the more tentative ones, and throwing in an occasional idea to get them thinking. After a couple of hours we had a collection of extraordinary images - ranging from comic scribbles to hauntingly evocative scenes of childbirth and alienation. Interestingly, men hardly figured in their vision of their lives - the marriage scene was the only one where a man (perforce!) had been included. Even when I teased them and forced them to put in an occasional male, they figured only as pall bearers, a priest, or the doctor with a grisly scalpel in hospital. With all the drawings in, we discussed each scene and how the different images could be incorporated into one harmonious composition. To introduce the concept of colours as conveying a mood, as well as combining with each other to create a pattern, I suggested that we give each scene a separate coloured background appropriate to its subject. Though limited by the choice of coloured poplin in the MVSS store, our eventual choices ranging from a progression of deepening yellows and reds for birth, girlhood, marriage, to the grey and black of widowhood and death. We then selected a few images from each group’s drawings and traced them onto 20 inch squares of Gateway paper, enlarging some and reducing others so that they fitted into an interesting composition. The idea that we were showing one woman in various stages of her life, and that she should be the central figure in each square, distinguished by size or some special feature from the others, seemed unfamiliar. Obviously, unlike urban women, they don’t see themselves in the heroine mode, or as markedly different from each other! We pricked the khaka transfers, and printed the designs (with a solution of kerosene and neel) onto the coloured poplin squares, which we had previously machined together. This central panel of 6 squares was then stitched onto a larger 60 x 90 bed sheet made up of 2 layers of unbleached markeen. We used a broad geometric linear border of wavy lines around the coloured panel to create a decorative frame that would pull together the various coloured pieces and very varied pictorial images. The 4 corners had a repeating motif of the 6 colours patched together, and a line of tiny women holding hands at the top and bottom of the quilt completed the design. Hopefully message and metaphor mingle harmoniously with art and end usage! By this time it was dark. Most of the women had drifted off in the afternoon, leaving only those who were spending the night. It was time for dinner, songs and chat. It has been a wonderful, productive, participatory day - luckily, as tomorrow the film crew will take over. Reena and her crew: Ranjan (cameraman), Ashish (sound) Raja Ram (technician) and Kalpana (general gofer and holder of hands) arrived with Nirmala at 7.30 - their plane from Delhi was as late as our train. It was too dark for them to do more than hump their 2 carloads of luggage upstairs (how happy I am that my creative process does not involve much equipment!), distribute boxes of sweets all round and join us at dinner. Later, recording the women’s songs, the start-stop-start again rhythm imposed by Ashish’s perfectionist desire to get everything right, plus his obsession with pin drop silence (difficult with so many children, dogs, hens and other village sounds, to say nothing of the ubiquitous paan shop loudspeaker blaring Hindi film songs) augurs ominously for tomorrow when they will be shooting in earnest. 9th: When Reena met me in Delhi and told me she was planning to coordinate the dates of her trip with mine I’d been deliberately rather vague and off-putting. I was horrified at the idea of the workshop as spectator sport! I’ve always found even a snapshot camera an obstruction to the kind of unselfconscious, total involvement that a successful workshop requires. And my knowledge of filming made me certain that however wonderful the end result, and however valuable the eventual documentation, the process would not only be painful, but death to my objective of collective creativity - which is a noisy, difficult, not necessarily dramatic or picturesque process. How right I was. The up-beat, participatory sharing of yesterday was quite gone. Every time we settled to something, from sorting threads into colourways to drawing a motif, Reena and gang would shift us to a new, better lit location or hush us into total frozen silence. The place was awash with cables and obtrusive machines. everyone was self conscious; either jostling into corners to dodge the camera, or trying (the younger girls and children ) to edge into its frame. Even when I retreated into the store to scold Munna the tailor for the elephantine proportions of his kurtas I found myself pursued by the huge, phallically threatening, boom mike. An attempt to withdraw with my embroidery for a breather meet with equal lack of success. It was impossible to re-create the spontaneity of yesterday’s collaborative design process. Every motion and sentence had to be repeated at least thrice. We fell back on putting together something more familiar and easy - a variant on the Women & Nature theme we had done for the Crafts Council UK exhibit - using the cream gamcha fabric with woven, green rudraksha borders that I had brought. After dividing and squaring up the quilt into a central panel with 12 inch borders, we sub-divided the central panel into 12 rectangles. Curving branches of bamboo, mango, and bor foliage were drawn free-hand by Anju, Vibha and Archana in alternative rectangles and the intervening ones filled with animals and figures, using existing tracings of designs already developed by us on our previous trip. I showed the girls how different juxtapositions of the same motifs created different designs and images. Also how interlocking and extending some branches into the spaces where there were figures softened the regularity of the layout. In both life and art, human beings and nature must interact together. The narrow, green border was stitched around the central panel as well as the outer circumference of the quilt: creating a double frame. In between the 2 woven borders we used an all-over jaal design of curving vines as a further broad border, knitting together the whole composition, while continuing the Nature theme. This lead to the start of an animated discussion on structure, and the need for both design layouts and society to have one - interrupted by the “sshsshs” of an irate Ashish!. Meanwhile one set of women: Ambika Devi, Sumitra Devi, Nuttu Devi, Puthul, Anupam, Seema Kumari, had started embroidering Quilt 1. We’d selected the colours and stitched little tags of each colour combination onto the coloured poplin squares. I’d made the women play a game, sorting my bag-full of a 100-odd variegated colour threads into piles of greens, reds, yellows, blues. It was interesting how confusing they found it, unused to such a plethora of different shades, to place a pale green or misty blue into an appropriate colour group. Embroidering too, they found it difficult to remember the rhythm of colour repeats. What was touching was their willingness to open up and redo their mistakes - none of the aggressiveness of our ari bharat women or other more professional craftswomen, used to calculating that time is money! Earlier Reena had told me that though she loved the colours and layout of Quilt 1, the dramatic ‘ochre, red, black’ colour combination was a very urban ‘designer’ one - clearly an outside intervention. I said that it had actually arisen out of a group discussion with the women. The associations - yellow and red for fertility and marriage, white for widowhood, black for death - were very much part of the traditional colour symbolism of Indian society. When colours were vegetable and mineral dyes, made by craftspeople themselves, from plants and resources around them, each colour and shade had a meaning and name and the directory of colours went into hundreds. India is probably the only civilization to have had words for 5 distinct shades of white! It is the advent of cheap, commercial azo-dyes into the village economy that has reduced the choices of the women to these half dozen, crude, primary shades now available in rural markets. In the afternoon I set Nirmala Devi to begin drawing the central image for Quilt 3. Though the Asia Society has ordered only 2 quilts, we plan to make 3, and let them choose the two they want. This quilt will have the same images of women’s lives as Quilt 1, but grouped around a large seated figure of a woman and child, surrounded by cooking equipment, sujni embroidery etc. Interspersed between the women’s figures will be huts, trees, livestock- even an occasional male? Meanwhile, Kaushalya Devi, Vibha and Geeta Devi and Nirmala struggled to put together the base. The purple bordered, orange gamcha forming the centre panel with a wide markeen surround, and the purple border again running round the circumference. Yesterday, they had done the cream quilt with ease, but the corners on this one refused to sit straight. I admired tiny Kaushalya Devi’s determination: long after the others wandered off she picked and un-picked the borders, eventually hauling the whole quilt upstairs to work in peace on the machine. She is at MVSS for the first time and grabs on each new skill with a terrier-like zeal, obsessed with getting it right. She also has a lovely singing voice and an endless repertoire of bhajans! Nirmala Devi is having problems creating a figure that has the same naif, stylised quality as the others, but is on a much larger scale. The first attempt looks like something out of a popular calendar: a busty, full frontal ‘filmi’ devi. I show her drawings in my book on Mithila painting. The next attempt is better, though it still doesn’t have the spontaneity I want. She is distracted between the whines of her little grandchild and the video camera recording every scratch of her pencil - she’s also longing for a drag! Finally, exasperated beyond control, she gives the wailing child a wallop and is horrified it’s been captured on film - as is her puffing her beedi. Her interview with Reena is a more orthodox litany, slightly by rote, of the ADITHI gospel: Money no consideration, ‘love of art’ and ‘telling the world the story of the poverty and pain of village women’ her only motivation. In real life she is a much more interesting, complex person; gauntly thin, with a difficult, sometimes tragic life that has not destroyed her wonderful, pawky humour. In the evening, we all go for a walk to the fisher village on the banks of the ‘mand’, the man-made lake created by diverting the river. As on my last trip and in so many rural housing schemes, I am horrified by the contrast between the soulless line of cement cubes built by the Government for the new fishermen’s village, and the vitality and harmoniously integrated juxtapositions of the existing village huts, creating their own dynamic of light, shade, and privacy within central, shared spaces for community life and children to play. We decide not to go on the river this time - night is falling. 10th: Reena is maddened by the sight of Ambika and me, glowing with the ostentatious virtue and cleanliness of our early morning cold baths! She comments on the ‘normalness’ of the lives we lead here- looking, dressing and behaving just as we do in Delhi. Reading books, washing hair, changing into night clothes at night. No special rural equipment of bottled water or tummy pills, no special ‘roughing it’ wardrobe or footwear. I explain that this is ‘normal’ for us. A regular part of our working lives, month in, month out. Half-joking, half serious, I express equal shock at the peremptory way the film crew send messages to get the village loud speaker turned off, forbid people to use the hand pump, or tell the miller to switch off his threshing machine because it interferes with filming. In the city wouldn’t she consider a similar veto an infringement of her civil liberties? The alacrity with which village people respond is a sign of their warmth to strangers, but also of how brainwashed they are into thinking educated city folk have rights that they don’t. Does the end result justify the means; how justified are all our interventions? Is the choice of sujni itself, as a vehicle to generate rural women’s employment and earning, an appropriate one? It certainly is not a solution that has arisen either out of the women’s own existing skills, or the demands of the consumer. When the women were drawing images of their lives and routines, embroidery didn’t figure in a single one! Streaming women into ‘womanly’ skills - stitching, embroidering, knitting, masala making - is the usual knee-jerk, rather patronising reaction of NGO Income Generation Programmes, but on the other hand it is a very harmonious, easy way to create employment without disturbing the traditional patterns of village life. And it needs no expensive investment or infrastructure. The crew is off to the villages today, to interview the women in their homes. So we have a peaceful, uninterrupted day and are able to get on with the 3rd quilt. Not all the women participate in this one, as two groups are working on the other two quilts, constantly breaking in to show me their progress, anxious that they are getting the colours right. Quilt 2 (being done by Jaykali, Jamila, Rambadevi, Sumitra, Kaushalya Devi and Sindhu) is all shades of greens and browns. Within the thread combinations already selected for each quilt, the women are free to put the colours where they like, but this kind of controlled freedom is difficult for them. Quilt 3 has a repeating motif of appliqué peepal leaves running round the border. Bits in appliqué patchwork were a feature of traditional sujni and we want to revive this. Several of the women are given pieces of waste cloth and I show them how to cut and fold the fabric to get neat shapes and make a rick-rack patchwork appliqué edging. The large figure drawn by Nirmala Devi is transferred onto the orange handloom, and the other smaller figures, trees, and huts transferred or drawn by hand around it. Archana, Nirmala Devi and Anju would be much happier if I dictated this process, while I am adamant that they plan and execute it. Of course there is a bit of me that is dying to be a totalitarian autocrat, especially when I don’t like what they have done - but I suppress this; reminding myself firmly that since I am always stressing I am a ‘product developer’ rather than ‘designer’, I had better live up to that role! Ambika meanwhile does various exercises with the women: getting their life stories, and doing some gender and group-formation games with them. She also makes them draw their version of yesterday’s filming and workshop. Cameras, mikes, and equipment loom large, the humans are considerably smaller! Tunna, Vibha’s little son, sticks firmly to my side, saying little but smiling sweetly, eyes shining brightly in his absolutely spherical face, always ready for a cuddle. He and 8 year old Ujwal, his elder brother, are so lovable and bright - what will happen to them? Will they become like all the other hopeless, lumpen, semi-literate men one sees listlessly hanging around everywhere; their only highs zarda and country liquor? Is it simply one’s gender and female bonding that makes one find the women here so much more appealing - physically, intellectually, emotionally - than their men? By evening all 3 quilts are designed, coloured up, and in progress, and we set off for a tour of the nearby villages. The bamboo and thatched roofs, set in green groves of mango and palms, give a falsely idyllic appearance to homes that are cleaner and neater than most Bihar cities, but bare and poverty stricken. A red rose creeper on the mud wall of one hut shines out like a beacon of colour and hope. Pied Piper style, we pick up a procession of children and girls as we go. Everyone wants us to visit and we have to be firm that we cannot and will not drink tea everywhere! The sujni women vary in age from 70 plus to 14 or 15; the elder ones traditional in sarees, their heads covered, while the younger girls wear salwar kameez, and even nail polish. But their aspirations and expectations of life are similar and limited; and most have the same dangerously passive dependency on some external force - be it husband, father or ADITHI - to be the dominant agent. As always, Nirmala Devi has a more robust approach: “The people who forbid us women to go outside our houses to work won’t feed us when we starve inside, so why should we bother to listen to them?” 11th: Today (our last day) we are going to Muzaffarpur, in a renewed search for interesting, local, raw material. I’m worried at the dependence of the Project on expensive, and difficult to access material bought by Dastkar from Delhi. When supplies run out they fall back on more and more quilts and cushions in that dreary markeen. But before we leave it’s my interview time! I’ve been dodging this. I feel very strongly that Dastkar and I are catalysts rather than protagonists in the sujni process. Also I hate being photographed! But Reena is adamant. Irritating, intrusive, and inconvenient though I find the filming, I like the way she knows exactly what she wants and goes for it. And I like her very much as a person. In fact, though our separate imperatives and agendas are quite different, and equally obsessive (theirs to capture on film everything that is interesting, or picturesque, in the best possible light, place, and sound; ours not just to complete 3 original quilts but to draw the women into their creation - however slow and torturous this may be) we mercifully all get on very well together - able to tease and laugh together, even when we find each other a bloody nuisance. Discovering in the process, in a typical Indian way, an endless web of interrelated friends and connections! It’s amusing too, to see Dastkar’s work and ourselves simultaneously through two very different pairs of eyes - the urban, professional perspective, and that of rural women. On camera, we discuss the whole business of ‘interventions’, and the differences between this and other Dastkar projects. The problems and challenges of working without an existing craft and design tradition, or the framework of a known market demand. Are we creating an new, indigenous craft tradition that will flourish and flower into the next millennium, or will sujni in Bhusara die if ADITHI and Dastkar were to disappear? We set the women various tasks for the day before leaving - I’ve taught Kaushalya, Geetha Devi, Archana, and Ambika Devi the ornamental, sujni, squared quilting stitch the day before, as well as zig-zag, patchwork appliqué, and want them to practice it. Some are making posters for the Disaster Mitigation Institute’s International Competition in Sri Lanka (Dastkar is coordinating the Indian entries, and Nirmala Devi’s personal experience of earthquake, floods and fire results in some powerful visuals, and a wonderful feeling of movement and drama) Other women continue work on the 3 quilts - gradually springing to life as colours and elements take shape. In the auto rickshaw there are 8 of us! Apart from Kailashji, Satya Narain, and Nirmala, Ambika, and me, there is a very frail, very old, sick woman going to hospital, accompanied by her son and grand daughter. Every bump in the long, long journey must have been agony - she is all skin and bone anyway. I point out a bus called “AMBIKA - FLYING BEAUTY” to Ambika. It’s been good to spend time with her - field trips are great times to talk, and it’s been ages since we traveled together. From being the Dastkar baby, she’s grown enormously in these 2 years; beneath her gentle, quiet exterior (she was given the sobriquet of “Amicable Ambika” at her recent Gender Training Course!) her instincts are both sensible and sensitive - mercifully free of development jargon! Muzaffarpur was a dead loss fabric-wise; though we did buy some khadi for men’s kurtas. En route and in the city we didn’t see a single woman wearing a traditional handloom weave. The dim lights, crowded, chaotic, dirty streets with tangled open electrical wires and liquid piles of garbage, derelict buildings, and unkempt public spaces contributed to our general depression. The only bright notes were a nice fish lunch, and seeing the fat proprietor of Anupam Handlooms, who’d been so rudely off-putting when I’d tried to look at fabric last time, now all betel-stained smiles, plying us with tea and paan, and personally unrolling bales of whatever caught my eye. We didn’t get back till evening, and there was a babble of packing, final instructions, and plans for what happens next - we leave at dawn tomorrow. It’s been decided that the 3 Asia Society quilts will be completed and brought to Delhi when MVSS come for the Dastkar Nature Bazaar in mid-March. 2 or 3 embroidery women will come too, and we will have another mini-workshop, plus put any final touches needed on the quilts. It’s amazing that they now seem quite ready to come to Delhi! Everyone then goes to watch the rushes of today’s filming, and Archana comes up for a private chat - including sex and marriage. She has decided that (like me) she doesn’t want to marry. I encourage her to be her true self, but say that for me - urban, educated, with my own home and income, part of a family and social structure where single women are taken for granted, and need not be solitary or celibate - to be unmarried is much, much easier than for her. The community in which she will spend the rest of her life is very different. She should not take categorical decisions just yet but stick out for the freedom of choice. 12th: With a target of 6 a.m. we actually manage to set off at 7, picking up Ghoshji and his newly wed wife en route. Kailashji has fever but is determined to come. Emotional farewells and hugs are exchanged, with, in the case of the film crew, an additional exchange of visiting cards, and promises to keep in touch. Vibha reminds me I have to send paper patterns, I remind her she has to send me khakas. Kaushalya Devi, Geetha Devi, Ambika Devi, Anju, and Archana, who have spent all 5 days of our stay with us, get ready as well, to go back home to their villages. Geetha and Kaushalya are at MVSS for the first time; they are taking Quilt 3 with them, and will form a new group in their village, Badokhal. While we were working out colourways yesterday, it was chilling to hear them quite casually discussing how often they’ve been tempted to kill themselves - only the thought of their children prevented them. Our check in time is 11.30 but we want to trawl the market for fabric. When we reach Patna at 10 we discover the government handloom shops open only at 11 or 12! How on earth can a State administered like this function? All along the road there are signs showing how desperate people are for some mechanism to uplift and improve themselves. Every fourth building has a board announcing it is the Red Carpet School (Approved), or Top Teaching Temple Tutorials, or some equally ambitiously and optimistically named educational institution. They all are obviously equally impoverished and inadequate. The sign for the Bright Buds Public School and Hostel (Co-educational) proudly offers Computer Classes, Gymnasium, and an English Library - it is housed in half a tumble-down, three room villa. At least sujni (if properly used) offers the women a unique, earning skill - distinctly their own. We’re happy to be going home - the torpid, sad squalor of Patna, only relieved by ragged pre-Elections buntings and blaring microphones, does not encourage loafing or nostalgia. But it’s been a good trip, with both the women and the MVSS organisation considerably more up-beat and involved than on my last visit. The only regret is that so much of what we had planned to do remains incomplete, with Reena and her crew also shooting their film simultaneously. Their priorities and requirements of the women and MVSS, (and us), were inevitably diametrically the opposite of Ambika’s and mine! And one doesn’t know quite when we can return. I’m dying to see the quilts completed; I’m thrilled by the change in the women - and I’m haunted by Geetha Devi’s words: ‘To work is forbidden, to steal is forbidden, to cheat is forbidden, to kill is forbidden, what else is left except to starve, sister?’

For the Asia Society 15.2.98.

Background: In December 1996 Laila Tyabji and Veronica George of Dastkar spent 6 days in Bhusara conducting a design and production workshop and evaluating the organisation and the women’s needs. The objectives were to get to know the MVSS organisation and staff and understand their work structure, to assess the skill levels and potential of the group, to develop a new range of products and designs and source local fabric for the group to use as raw material, to work with target women from all the MVSS villages and develop their own design skills, as well as to oversee production for the forth-coming DASTKAR Bazaars and evaluate MVSS's production capability and product ranges for future marketing interventions, including export. At the end of that first 1996 workshop Laila wrote:

“The apathy and lack of involvement was catching. I have seldom felt less creative, enthused or motivated myself - the lack of reciprocal energy was like a stone wall. One longed for the creativity and opinionated gutsiness of the Kutchi Rabaris, the tenacity and determination to learn and earn of our Ranthambhore women, the pride in their own skills and curiosity about others' of the Sandur Lambanis.”

DASTKAR, a Delhi based NGO for Crafts & Craftspeople, provides a variety of support services to traditional artisans - including training, credit, product development, design and marketing - working with over a 100 grass-roots producer groups all over the country. Dastkar strongly believes in craft and the alternative sector as a social, cultural and economic force of enormous strength and potential. Helping craftspeople, especially women, learn to use their own inherent skills as a means of employment, earning and independence is the crux of the Dastkar programme. Laila is a founder member and Chairperson of Dastkar; she is also one of the in-house Dastkar designers. Her specialty is textile-based crafts, especially embroidery and appliqué, using the traditional craft skill and design tradition as a base for products with a contemporary usage and appeal. Projects includes design and skill development with the chikan workers in SEWA Lucknow, Ahir and Rabari mirrorwork in Kutch and Banaskantha, Madhubani painting, sujni, lambani and kasuti embroidery in Bihar, Maharashtra and Karnataka. A major project is the Ranthambhore Artisans Project in Rajasthan - turning traditional materials and skills into employment and earnings for village communities around the Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve. Part of Dastkar’s artisan programmes are an annual series of Exhibitions and Bazaars held through the year, both in Delhi and other Indian cities. At the Dastkari Bazaar craftspeople (many of them in the city for the first time) bring and sell their own stocks of goods directly, make their own bills, book future orders and learn the ways of the urban marketplace. The use of the Bazaar as a training ground in marketing, consumer trends and the importance of correct costing and sizing, design and quality control is a core component .Groups are helped to design and plan production in workshops prior to the Bazaar and to evaluate sales and customer feedback after it. The Bazaars are a testing ground for new products and better sales, but also an affirmation of the strength, skill and sustainability of Indian crafts and craftspeople. MVSS has been attending DASTKARI BAZAARS and interacting with Dastkar since 1994. It also supplies stock to the Dastkar Shop in Delhi, run on a cooperative basis.

SUJNI QUILTED EMBROIDERY Mahila Vikas Sahayog Samiti, Bhusara Village, Muzaffarpur District, North Bihar.

Slow stitches - telling stories Muzaffarpur district in Bihar is deceptively green and lushly serene. The media reports of violence, corruption, exploitative political and inter-caste tensions seem at such variance with the passivity and karmic calm that are also a feature of rural Bihar. The women embroiderers in Bhusara and their sujni quilted embroidery are a paradigm of similar paradoxes and contradictions: The meticulousness of the thousands of fine stitches contrast with the apathy and casualness with which the women work; their indifference to earning higher wages by more systematic production a denial of their poverty and need. MVSS (Mahila Vikas Sahyog Samiti). is a small, autonomous Society supported by the Patna-based NGO, ADITHI under the leadership of Kailashji, a social worker who had worked with Jai Prakash Narayan in the Land Reform Movement, before returning to Bhusara, his native village. MVSS is centred in Bhusara, a village of about a 1000 families, but spreads out to 350 sujni craftswomen in 10-15 villages in the environs. Other MVSS and ADITHI projects in the area, include agriculture, health, education and fishery. (Bhusara is perched on the banks of a lake.) Anju and Archana, two young, partially educated local girls, are in charge of coordinating production, and are paid a salary. Others, including Nirmala Devi and Vibha, who trace the designs, are paid on a piecework basis. MVSS's objective is to reach all sections of the community, and the beneficiaries are both the upper-caste, homebound women who traditionally did sujni, and women from the really needy, desperately poor hutments on the outskirts of the villages who work in the fields and otherwise never handled a needle. There are middle-aged women looking to supplement family incomes, as well as very young girls, ‘passing time’ before marriage. MVSS operates from a small two-storey house in the middle of Bhusara village - it is more of a home than an office. The women and young girls sit around on the floor and verandah, stitching the quilts, bedspreads, and garments in an amiable but desultory way characteristic of Bihar. They like the human contacts and ease of the work they do, they enjoy the end product, but feel no involvement with it. Chinta, her husband, and four young children live off a couple of hundred yards of cultivated land; she earns an average of a couple of hundred rupees - but she appears to nurture neither ambition or greed. Anju, just married, has a supportive husband and in-laws who are happy to have her work. Sarita was married at 11 to a husband who is a deaf mute. There are many similar tragic, but familiar stories. Drunk, disabled, absentee or otherwise unemployable husbands, wicked mothers-in-law, property that has been mortgaged away to pay debts. Nirmala is everyone’s surrogate mother; widowed, always complaining but endlessly energetic, she is the driving force that keeps the organization going. Most cushions and bedcovers are made on white `markeen' Coloured mull or handloom is used for sarees, kurtas and dupattas and, when the group can afford it, tussar for stoles and jackets. A Dastkar objective is always to use, if possible, locally available raw material as the base for any products it develops. This serves 2 purposes:

The raw material is easily accessible by the group, thus cutting down costs, delays and dependency.
The product has a distinctive, regional identity, differentiating it from other products in the urban market.

Muzaffarpur, (an hour and a half away by auto rickshaw) is an unpromising source of interesting, indigenous fabrics. The shopkeepers, with characteristic North Bihar lethargic disinterest, appear reluctant, almost hostile, to attempts to persuade them to show anything. However, there are Bhagalpur silk-cotton spreads, rough spun handloom khadi for cushioning, tussar, and even a 115" width markeen fabric for double bedspreads. Thread shades other than egg yellow, acid pink, sky blue and viridian green, are equally difficult to find. Sujni is a labour-intensive but simple embroidery, similar to the kantha of Bengal, but with a more limited stitch repertoire. Tiny running stitches cover the entire fabric, which is traditionally white or red, with the main outlines of the motifs highlighted in a thick chain stitch. Filling stitches inside the motifs are done in coloured thread, those outside are done in white or the colour of the base fabric. The fabric is generally lined with a finer muslin backing before embroidering, giving a quilted effect to the design. Motifs are of figures, flora and fauna, done in naïf, pictorial style, often illustrating folklore and religious iconography. Sujni had almost died out in Bihar, replaced by much cruder appliqué patchwork and chain stitch fabric pictures in jute and poplin. ADITHI and Viji Srinivasan's enthusiasm for the craft was instrumental in reviving it. Its simplicity of technique, yet delicacy and detail, the stylized, contemporary look, and the range of products to which it is can be applied, make it a craft with potential both in the market-place and as a mechanism for women's earning and employment. 3 or 4 women often work on the larger pieces together, further enhancing its community aspect. The women do not create their own designs, which have been developed by ADITHI or Dastkar and are traced or drawn onto the cloth for them by two of the girls who have been trained in this work. Many of the products developed by ADITHI use the sujni quilt as a vehicle of social comment - a sort of comic strip poster illustrating social issues like Family Planning or dowry. The Dastkar design principle was to preserve sujni's unique quality and the spontaneity of its traditional design style, almost like a child's drawing, while incorporating new elements and motifs into it, and varying the colourings and usages. Each spread or saree is made up of different small elements and motifs put together and linked by freehand drawing, so each is unique in itself. Designs developed by Dastkar consist of:

a collection of large stylized flowering plant motifs to be used on sari pallav and dupattas, bedcovers, etc.;
a series of larger animals and birds derived from tribal wall paintings, and in the same naïf style, as an addition to their existing trees and animal motifs;
all-over jaals with abstract or geometric motifs, to be used as borders or central fillers for dupattas and spreads.

Nibha, one of the MVSS girls, was recently awarded one of the Delhi Crafts Council Young Craftsperson of the Year Scholarships - it includes a monthly stipend and a watch. The sujni bedspread developed at a Dastkar workshop, now in London, on which she was still working, was exhibited at the award ceremony in Delhi. It was 17 year old Nibha’s first visit to Delhi, but she seemed to prefer sitting in DASTKAR, stitching on her spread, to sight-seeing!

Preface This study is being undertaken to facilitate the revival of the dying craft of the Blue Pottery of Delhi. The broad objective of the study is to analyse the origin and the present status of the craft, current socio-economic conditions of the craftsperson, and the major problems and challenges affecting the growth and development of Blue Pottery of Delhi in particular, and the craft sector, in general. 1. Synopsis Blue Pottery of Delhi is one of the many languishing crafts of India of India. It is a distinct stoneware pottery a with rich glazed blue surface, and beautifully painted Mogul motifs in shades of blue and other colours as accents, on a clear, white body. The craft is of Persian descent, brought to India by the Pathan rulers, who got artisans from Persia to make glazed blue tiles and jalis to adorn their magnificent architecture. Once a flourishing craft, Blue Pottery of Delhi is today on the verge of extinction; with only one practising craftsman left, the future of the craft seems uncertain. There are many problems enveloping the craft: problems pertaining to design development and transfer of skill; lack of proper marketing, declining demand; non availability of good quality raw material; want of incentives from the government, etc. This study tries to analyse the situation and bring to the fore the issue threatening the existence of the craft. Study Areas and Methodology Study areas:

Geographical location of the area
Historical background of the craft and the region
Social, cultural, economic, and health issues
Production process: material, tools, equipment, and technique, and design and quality
Marketing, packaging, and economics
Softer issues of occupational health hazards, development, education and gender issues
Identifying problem areas and suggesting alternatives.

Methodology Systematic gathering and processing of data to reassert the value of the craft include:

Collection of existing information from: magazine articles; books; gazettes
Field visits
Interview with the artisan
Visit to the workshop
Collection of samples of raw material.
Photographs of products in stock.
The information gathered was sorted and compiled into a document.

Unfortunately, the process could not be covered as the work was suspended due to rains at the time of field study. However, the process, as described by the artisan has been included in the document. 2. The History Blue pottery, as we know, in India is popularly associated with Jaipur. But when we trace its history we find that it has travelled a long way before it found its home in the Jaipur. According to local belief it was introduced from China to Persia through the influence of Taimur Lang's Chinese wife. From Persia it spread to other Muslim countries of Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, and the Middle East countries. It actually originated in Iran where it was named Sangineh, meaning 'white pottery'; before that the body was not stoneware but a replication of Chinese porcelain. When the pre-Mogul rulers began building their mosques and tombs in the vicinity of Delhi, they imported artisans from Persia to make plain coloured, blue stone ware tiles and grills, which were employed to add more colour to the architecture. No evidence of glazed pottery is available before that. From Delhi it travelled to Jaipur and was given the name 'Blue Pottery' by the British due to the predominance of the colour blue to paint the motifs decorating the white stoneware. In India the craft appears to have originated in Delhi, the first local craftsman being a Hindu potter, Bhola, a kumhar who learnt the art of glazed pottery from the migrant artisans. Two of Bhola's pupils migrated to Jaipur where they started practising, and also teaching the craft under the patronage of Sawai Ram Singh, the then Raja of Jaipur. The craft flourished in Jaipur while in Delhi the artisans either moved on to other occupations or migrated to Jaipur. The craft started languishing with the advent of the British rule, when a deliberate attempt was made by the Empire to destroy indigenous handicrafts. Although blue pottery has been revived in Jaipur due to the sincere hard work of Padamshree Kripal Singh Ji, the Blue Pottery of Delhi, which is only slightly different from the Blue Pottery of Jaipur has slowly faded away. Sardar Gurcharan Singh Ji, a renowned potter from India, learnt the art of 'Delhi Blue' from Abdullah a Muslim potter whose forefathers came to India during the Mogul rule. Gurcharan Singh Ji even started a trust called the Delhi Blue Pottery Trust but failed to give the art a fresh lease of life. Today there is only one craftsperson, Madan Lal, a descendent of Bhola, practising the craft in Delhi. In Jaipur, Blue Pottery has gained popularity again, and is one of the best selling craft product of Rajasthan; a lot of technological and design intervention, aided by the state government, has gone into developing it to its present state; however, not much has been done to popularise or improve the quality of the Blue Pottery of Delhi. Unless necessary steps are undertaken to revive the craft it might get lost forever. 3.The Craftsman: Madan Lal 3.1 Who He Is Forty-nine year old Madan Lal, a descendent of Bhola, the first Hindu potter to practice Blue pottery, is the fifth generation of his family involved in the craft of pottery. He is perhaps the only repository of the craft. As the technique was a well guarded secret of his family it was never shared with or taught to people outside the family. Today he is the only person practising Blue Pottery in Delhi, carrying on the legacy passed on to him by his forefathers. He inherited the skills from his father, Hazari Lal, a state award winner for excellence in his this field. As a youngster he did not have any interest in this work; however, circumstances forced him to take up the work when his father fell seriously ill in 1969, when he was just 16 years old. He had to give up his studies to carry on his family tradition. With the support and guidance of his convalescing father, mother, grandmother, and uncle he mastered the art within no time. In those days everything was done at home. The women of the family were involved in preparing the raw material, the most tedious and time consuming work, and the mixing of it in the desired proportions. They were experts in their work and were respected for it; the preparation is of cardinal importance in the process, for a little deviation from norm can spoil the entire process. Even the hired labour were women. Today some of the raw materials are obtained in ready ground state and the rest are ground at home by Madan Lal himself with the help of his brothers or by hired labour. He won the state handicrafts design award for three consecutive years -1975, 1976, and 1977. The Delhi Small Scale Industry honoured him with a special award in 1975. All the adulation and recognition egged him on to work hard and gave a boost to his creativity. His clients consisted elite businessmen, bureaucrats, and politicians: he supplied the Central Cottage Industries Emporium in Delhi and also hotels. He also conducted a few training workshops organised and sponsored by the Development Commissioner Handicrafts, from 1980 to 2001, each of one year's duration. He has trained over 50 people in these workshops; however most shied away from the toil and hard work involved. Madan Lal was not happy with the outcome and so decided to stop taking the workshops. But today, he is in dire straits with no orders to work on. There was a time when he used to have a firing twice a month but now it has come down to once in three months. He has to struggle to get a place at the craft space in New Delhi, 'Dilli Haat', or at other fairs and exhibitions. 3.2 Socio-economic Conditions When Madan Lal started working, back in 1969 there were 13 workshops manufacturing Delhi Blue Pottery in Delhi. At that time he was staying in his ancestral house in Suiwalan, near Jama Masjid in Old Delhi. He recalls how in those days all the work was done at home, from preparing the raw material to firing. Then gradually over the years things changed: they started procuring processed raw material from the local retailer. However, the deteriorating quality of the raw material adversely affected the quality of work which led to the decline in demand; the artisans moved on to other occupations and today Madan Lal is the only one practising the craft of the Blue Pottery of Delhi. In 1994, he sold his ancestral house and shifted to Chander Vihar near Shakarpur in Shahadra, in North Delhi. Earlier four of his six brothers used to work with him full time, but now they have all shifted to other occupations. Madan Lal has six members in his family: including himself, his wife, three daughters and a son all dependent on the income from the craft. Besides his immediate family he has four brothers and their families staying in the same house. After five decades of hard work Madan Lal is barely able to sustain his family from the income from the craft. Besides the house he does not have any other fixed assets, he has a phone connection but no motorised vehicle. He has no other means of income besides the craft. The fall in demand has led to disappointment and despair, so much so, that nobody in the family wants to carry it on, and the younger generation is discouraged from showing interest in the craft if, at all, they do show any. 3.3 His Workspace Madan Lal has his workshop in his house itself; on the first floor of his double-storied house of 200 sq feet - a dingy 10 sq. feet room without proper ventilation, and provision of electricity. He is short of space to dry the moulded articles which he dries in the corridor outside his work room or in the small front yard of his house. This front yard also has a small kiln for firing the products. He does not have adequate or proper storage space for raw materials, tools, and equipment. Shortage of space was on of the reasons for moving out of their old house; however, the problem persists even in the present house. Madan Lal does not have enough means to either purchase or hire a small space for his workshop.

4. The Craft

Delhi Blue Pottery is a kind of glazed stoneware pottery. The body is not made of clay but mainly of Silica (burbura) mixed with glass powder; gum, fuller's earth (multani mitti), and bicarbonate of soda (sajji) as minor additives. Owing to its low plasticity it cannot be moulded on the potter's wheel; it has to be moulded by hand. But this facilitates shaping and easy joining; shrinkage is low while drying as well as after firing. The green body is covered with a slip consisting of silica, glass powder, and fine wheat flour to seal the pores and cracks and give a clear white base for painting. The glaze used is lead based, due to its low firing temperature. 4.1 Raw Materials 4.1.1. Items a. Raw Materials for Preparing the Body. For the preparation of the body the basic raw materials are quartz and green glass; sajji (soda bicarbonate/bentonite) is used as a minor additive; and katira gum is used as binding material.

Quartz: This is abundantly available in the state of Rajasthan. Quartz, the major component of the body, is the source of silica in the body. The melting point of quartz is high, so it can take great temperatures. Silica gives the body stability and strength.
Green glass (kaanch): This is brought from Jaleshwar, in Uttar Pradesh. It is green in colour and available in rock form, but this particular variety is no longer available. The artisan is having trouble sourcing it or replacing it with other available raw material(s): as it has never been tested, hence the quality requirements and the composition is not known. In Jaipur artisans have started using glass cullet, which is a waste product obtained from the glass units in Firozabad (Uttar Pradesh).
Gum (Katira gum): It is a natural resin of a tree with adhesive properties. Gum is used to increase the plasticity of the green body for shaping as well as to strengthen the unfired articles on drying. Katira gum is easily available in provision stores as it is used in food products.
Bentonite (sajji): Also known as papad khara, this raw material is edible and is believed to cure indigestion. It is probably impure soda bicarbonate. It is easily available in provision stores. Sajji adds plasticity, as it is believed to absorb moisture from the atmosphere.
Fuller's Earth (Multani mitti): This is used to add plasticity to the body as, like sajji, it retains moisture for a longer period of time, thus helping the body to retain its shape. It is easily available in provision stores.

b. Engobe (Asther) Raw Materials Asther is a coating applied on the unfired body after it has been shaped and finished with sandpaper. It consists of quartz and glass powder, which are held in suspension by adding a glutinous binder made of maida mixed in water and heated. It gives a smooth white non-absorbent surface on which painting can be done.

Quartz: (same as in the body composition)
Glass: (same as in the body composition)
Fuller's earth (maida): This is used for the preparation of the paste, which holds the materials in suspension. It gives a uniform coating of engobe application. Maida is fine wheat flour; an item of daily household consumption, it is easily available in all provision stores.

c. Colours and Chemicals To paint the surface chemical colours obtained from minerals found in the earth are used. The Blue Pottery of Delhi usually comes in two, or at the most three, colours: Cobalt blue, turquoises blue, and green. There is another technique of colouring which uses only turquoise blue. In this technique the colour stain is mixed in engobe; on firing it gives an opaque turquoise blue effect. d. Chemicals:

Copper oxide for blues (tamba ki pal)
Cobalt oxide for blues (retah)
Pevdi (used in white washing) mixed with copper oxide for green
Chrome oxide for green.

Glaze raw materials. A vitreous glaze is prepared to coat the body and give it a smooth lustrous shine after firing. Since the glaze is a low temperature one a frit (a mixture of all the glaze raw materials heated to form molten glass which, on plunging in cold water shatters) is prepared. The frit is grounded to form the glaze.
Frit ingredients:

Glass powder
Red lead (Sindoor): This provides the lead oxide, which is one of the most important bases available for potters' use; it is an ingredient of several types of glazes. It is the only base that can be used with Silica to give low-moderate maturing glazes. Lead glazes are brilliant, lustrous and smooth, but easily scratched unless the silica content is high. Lead being poisonous these glazes are banned in some countries including India. In Jaipur, a lead free glaze has been developed.
Borax (Suhaga): This is widely used as a flux for earthenware and other type of pottery and ceramics. Like silica it combines with bases to form glassy compounds after fusion. It increases the brilliance of the glaze it also lowers the thermal expansion and surface tension. Due to these qualities borax can be used in small quantities but large amount of it induces defects such as cracking, blistering, and thickening of glaze.
The frit is crushed and mixed with maida. Maida is used to prepare the viscose paste, which holds the glaze in suspension.

4.1.2. Availability of Raw Materials Quartz was brought in from the state of Rajasthan, in rock form, which was ground in stone chakkis at home; today it is locally available in a ready-to-use form. Green glass was obtained from Jaleshwar, in Uttar Pradesh; this was also available in rock form. It is no longer available and the artisan is facing a problem in finding an alternative material, as the chemical composition is not known. All the other raw materials have always been available locally except the chemical oxides used for colouring, which were imported from distant places. When the raw material is prepared at home the coarseness and fineness can be controlled according to what is desired; when it is bought ready ground, this freedom is lost. Today all the raw material is available in semi-prepared state at Star Company, (stockers and wholesalers of pottery raw material of all kinds) in Kamla Market in Delhi. Apparently the craftsman should have benefited from this, but the high prices of good quality raw material has made him settle for cheaper raw material, compromising the quality of his products. 4.1.3. Price of Raw Materials

Quartz
Green Glass
Bentonite
Fuller's earth
Gum
Flour
Red Lead (Star co.)
Borax (Star co.)
Copper Oxide (Star co.)
Chrome Oxide (Star co.)
Cobalt Oxide (Star co.) (depending on quality)
Wood
</UL

- Rs 100/40 kg
- Rs I5/kg
- Rs 45/kg

Rs10/kg
Rs 150/kg
Rs 15/kg
Rs 100/kg
Rs 25/kg
Rs 100/kg
Rs 600/kg
Rs 1500-3000/kg
Rs. 120/quintal

4.1.4. Processing of Raw Materials

- Quartz: It is obtained in ground form, but has to be sieved to remove impurities.
- Glass: The glass used in the body is procured in crystal form, then broken down into smaller pieces using a hammer. These pieces are ground in a manual stone grinder, chakki.
- Gum: This is soaked in water over night then dried in the sun. Once fully dry it is cleaned and ground in the chakki.
- Bentonite and Fuller's Earth: These are also broken down into smaller pieces and ground in the chakki.
- Frit: For the preparation of frit, red lead is available in powder form and does not require any processing. The other ingredient borax is also available ground and ready to use. Glass is processed at the workshop as explained above. The frit is once again ground in the chakki and sieved.
- Flour: For the preparation of asther and glaze suspension, maida is dissolved in water and boiled to form a glutinous paste which is sieved through fine cloth and the fritted paste is used in asther and glaze.
- Colour oxides: The colouring oxides are available in the form of finely ground powders, which are ready to use.

The processing of raw materials does not employ any machinery, and all the grinding processes are carried out manually using primitive tools, which have been used for ages. 4.2. Process 4.2.1. Preparation of the Body Batch composition of body:

Quartz 40 parts
Glass 4 parts
Gum 1 part
Bentonite 1 part
Fuller's earth 1 part

The powdered ingredients are mixed together in correct proportions and just enough water is added to make dough of plastic consistency and left over night to mature. It is then kneaded to even out the moisture content. Fabrication of wares:

The dough is beaten into a thin slab of desired thickness, using a flat base, conical stone (thappa).
The slab is tamped into the clay mould and the rim is finished using a metal scraper or knife.
It is filled with moist ash to support the moulded specimen. The mould is inverted on a clay slab and the moist ash supports the green body as, it does not have strength to retain its shape.

Drying: The green body is sun dried for a day.
Finishing: Once fully dry, the ash is extracted and the article is sanded on the outside as well as the inside, using pebbles of amri stone. The rim is finished by rubbing the article on a slab of amri stone.
Joining: The neck and base are joined using plastic mass of the same body composition.
Drying: The article is dried once again for a day.

Once it is completely dry it is finished again. Now the article is ready for application of asther, a thick slip which is applied on the inner and outer surface one at a time, and allowed to dry. 4.2.2. Application of Engobe (Asther) Batch composition:

Quartz - 40 parts
Glass - 14 parts
Maida - 5/4 parts

Preparation of Asther: Maida is added to water slowly, and mixed well so that lumps do not form. The paste is taken in a vessel and boiled so that it thickens. This paste is sieved through a fine cloth mesh. Quartz and glass powder is mixed with the paste, enough water is added to the mixture to give the slip a dropping consistency. Care should be taken while adding water to get the right consistency: if this slip is thin, the body shows, and if it is thick the article cracks during drying. This slip is prepared in thick terracotta cauldron.
Application: The article is dipped and swirled in the slip, coating the outer surface first. It is kept aside for drying. After the asther on the exterior dries, it is applied on the interiors and allowed to dry. The finer the quartz powder in the asther, the better is the finish.

Drying: The article is allowed to dry for a day.
Finishing: The article is finished using the sandpaper, and is now ready for painting.

4.2.3. Painting: Designing: The artisan draws the design on the article with a pencil. This design is first outlined, and then coloured.

Painting: The design is coloured using colours prepared from different oxides, diluted in water.
Preparation of gum solution: Gum is dissolved in water and colour stains are mixed in. Care should be taken while adding water so that the colour solution does not become sticky or too fluid.
Application: The colour suspension is applied with the help of a fine brush made of squirrel hair.

After painting the design, the article is allowed to dry before the application of the glaze. 4.2.4. Glazing Since the glaze applied on blue pottery matures at a low temperature a frit is prepared containing red lead, borax, and glass powder. Batch composition:

Frit:
Glass - 40 parts
Borax - 20 parts
Lead - 20 parts
Maida - as required.

Preparation of frit: The components in powder form are mixed thoroughly and melted in a graphite crucible. The molten frit is put in a steel bucket filled with cold water with the help of a ladle tied to a long stick. The molten frit solidifies and shatters on falling in water. In Jaipur a separate furnace is used for preparation of frit, but in Delhi the craftsman makes frit in the same kiln which is used for firing. The entire process takes about an hour and half.

Grinding of frit: The frit is removed from water and allowed to dry. It is then powdered in the hand mill (chakki) and sieved.
Preparation of glaze: Powdered frit is mixed with a glutinous paste made of maida boiled in water. Enough water is added to give the solution the desired viscosity. The solution should be thick enough to form a uniform and smooth coating.
Application of glaze: The article is swirled in the glaze and left to dry. The articles are now ready for firing.

4.2.5. Firing

A kiln is used to fire the blue pottery articles.
The firing spans over five days.
It takes a day to load the kiln.
The kiln is fired for on night (5-6 hours). Firing is stopped when the glaze starts melting, and the kiln is unloaded on the third day, when it has cooled down.

Fuel: Kikar wood is used as fuel to fire the kiln, as it does not generate smoke. About 4-5 quintals of wood are used in the artisan's kiln one firing.
The Kiln: The artisan uses an up-draft kiln to fire his wares. The design of the kiln is similar to the kilns used in Iran: It is cubodal outside and the inside walls are round. There are supports of refractory clay projecting out on the inner periphery; these are used to support the plates on which the wares are kept.
Kiln Furniture:

Plates (takhti) made of terracotta.
Props (pillars/sipahi) made of terracotta.

Loading of articles: The articles are loaded into the kiln on plates supported by pillars. The plates are covered with a coat of asther so that the glaze does not stick to the plate. The plates ore kept about three to four inches away from the inner wall of the kiln, for free and easy circulation of heat. The craftsman has to go inside the kiln to load it, while another person hands him the articles from the openings on the side and the top. Efficiency of the Kiln: Temperatures in the kiln can go up to 700 - 850 degrees. Since the kiln is an up-draft kiln a lot of heat is lost from the openings at the top and on the side, which leads to consumption of more fuel. There is only one, central flue hole from which the heat enters the kiln. As this hole is located in the centre of the kiln the heat takes time to reach the sides; the articles close to the flue get heated first as they get the maximum heat, while the ones on the inner periphery get heat very late. Due to this unequal distribution of heat the glaze of the ones that get more heat runs and spreads, whereas the rest, which do not get enough heat, face the problem of the glaze cracking or chipping off, due to uneven heating. Firing is one of the most crucial processes and requires a lot of care and experience. Slight carelessness could ruin the entire batch. Since both the outer and the inner surface or the body get baked at the same time, as the green body is not biscuit fired, the temperature has to be controlled so that there are no incongruities. If there are incongruities the surfaces react and the glaze blackens. While firing the temperature rises at a high speed; when it is stopped the drop in temperature has to be maintained for some time and then allowed to fall gradually: it has to be slow and consistent, so that the oxidation reduction transition is even, the lack of which spoils the glaze. 4.3. Problem Areas in the Process

The artisan does not know the origin and the composition of the raw materials he is using.
The process of preparing raw material is labour intensive, time consuming, and tedious, as there are no machines available to the aid of the craftsman.
The fabrication process is crude and time consuming, as it involves a lot of stages - moulding, drying, finishing, joining, and finishing. If it is not taken to the next stage on time the articles get warped, due to which the joints are not accurate, which causes cracks to appear on the surface after firing.
Retention of dimensional accuracy as well as reproduction of identical pieces is difficult.
Porous body leads to absorption of colour, painting is thicker, which makes the glaze crawl from the affected areas.
If the frit is not finely ground the glazed surface develops pinholes, bubbles, and cracks, as the glaze does not melt evenly.
The use of lead glaze obviates its use for tableware, as it reacts with edibles. This is perhaps the greatest drawback of blue pottery.

4.4. Suggestions for Improvement

Quality and composition checking of raw materials is important for selection of right kind of raw material. This would improve the quality of products, and also help the craftsman in finding correct substitutes and alternative raw materials in the wake of scarcity or non-availability.
Low cost mechanised grinders for preparation of raw material would bring down the cost of labour, and the time consumed would be less.

Use of finely ground body slurry for filling up pores, before asther, would improve the finish. This process is in practice in Jaipur and has helped upgrade the quality.

5. Marketing

Blue Pottery was once flourishing in the heart of the capital and also got recognition from the Government. Hajarl Lal, Madan Lal's late father, was frequently invited to exhibit at the embassies; he had a good foreign clientele consisting of ambassadors and bureaucrats. He also supplied to the Central Cottage Industries Corporation's Emporium in Delhi. Madan Lal continued to do so but stopped when 'Dilli Haat' was set up; when the charges for stalls were hiked he stopped selling there too. Today he earns his livings by the little sales he makes to his foreign and Indian clients, who have come to him through records at the DC(H), and Dilli Haat or through his old contacts as he does not have the means to undertake any form of promotion. He exhibits at Dilli Haat sometimes, especially during the Diwali season. Packaging is another aspect which needs to be taken care of, as, at present there is no proper arrangement for it. Due to lack of proper packaging goods get damaged in transit, because of which the artisan is forced to sell locally and thus restrict his market. Packaging is done only in case of exports, which are rare, or when a customer insists on it, and pays for it. The Blue Pottery of Delhi has lost its market to Jaipur, which has gained so much favour and popularity over the years that many craft clusters, practising the craft have come up in the vicinity of Jaipur to satisfy the ever increasing demand for Blue Pottery products. The quality has also improved commendably due to the efforts of the Rajasthan Government: training programmes to develop skills; research and development to upgrade the quality; and technical and marketing assistance. On the other hand the craft in Delhi is on the verge of extinction; the situation is so had that only a few know that the craft is being practised in Delhi. Immediate steps need to be taken to give it a face-lift and increase the market share.

6. Observations and Recommendations

6.1. Observations Quality Improvement The orders have decreased over the past few years as the quality has deteriorated due to lack of good quality raw material and the resulting compromises on quality. The articles are porous and fragile. Design Development The artisan designs his products, but has not received any training in this field. He faces difficulty in developing new motifs and forms: as a consequence that designs are outdated. There has been negligible design development and product diversification to suit the ever-changing demands of the customers, due to which many customers have been lost to competition from Jaipur. Research and Development The glaze used is hazardous to health and inappropriate for tableware; it has been banned in many countries and according to the artisan this negative publicity has had an adverse effect on the sales. Although a lead-free glaze has been developed at Jaipur, the artisan in Delhi has not been able to benefit from it, as the intervention has not reached him. Pricing Structure Pricing the products is difficult and no clear method is being followed. The process being labour intensive and time consuming it is difficult to assess the time, money, and labour spent on each article. Since every thing is done by hand, the entire process is time consuming, and it is difficult to price the individual products, as each article is unique. Marketing Assistance The craft needs promotion to expand its market and also to face competition. There is a need to develop forward and backward linkages. The craft needs image building and a strong regional identity. Till now the products are being sold only in Delhi. If sold in distant markets, the response would probably encourage craftspersons to produce more and to improve quality. 6.2. Recommendations

The artisan needs to be motivated and encouraged to improve the quality of his work and perform better.
Financial aid could be provided to the artisan to build adequate infrastructure and take proper measures for quality control.
Training programmes could be conducted where potters can be taught the technique in order to develop a cluster. Besides the skills, quality control and marketing should also be an integral part of these workshops.
Marketing the craft strategically is very important. This calls for developing a wide range of products targeted at specific markets.
Pricing is another aspect that needs attention. The artisan needs to be given input on strategic pricing so that the prices of his products are viable.
The artisan could be given design input to meet the ever-changing market demand with product diversification and development.

7. Conclusion and Bibliography

7.1. In Retrospect: A question of Answers Blue Pottery of Delhi is a dying craft today but, it had a glorious past, and flourished in the heart of the capital under royal patronage. The investigation has given rise to a lot of questions, answers to which are crucial for the revival and growth of the Blue Pottery of Delhi. Why is it that, even though the artisan has both skill and experience, he is finding it difficult to cope with the competition from Jaipur Blue Pottery? The process has been simplified with the availability of processed raw material but the quality of products has deteriorated? Sales have gone down drastically and the artisan is finding it difficult to support himself and his family. The sales are occasional. The same artisan was honoured with awards and accolades a few years back and was flooded with orders. Why has he not benefited from the technological interventions made in the field; it is not as if he does not know of them. What brought the craft to its present state: is it the recession in the world economy; the competition from cheaper and more durable industrial products; the competition from other, similar crafts; or the artisan's incompetence? The same craft is flourishing at another place, then why is it fading away at the place where it spread from? What insecurities made the artisan's family keep it a secret; is this the reason behind its fading away? Had there been more artisans practising the craft in Delhi would the situation be better? What is it that needs to be done? There is demand for Blue Pottery which is evident from the flourishing clusters in Rajasthan. Is design development the answer to the problems, would the artisan be able to relate to the new contemporary designs in the same way as he would to the traditional designs? How do you preserve or enhance the craft's identity if it does not suit the market demand? What is more important: the craft or the artisan's livelihood… The survival of the craft calls for strategic policies for promotion and positioning of the craft and financial aids to the effect. Immediate steps need to be taken to save the craft of the Blue Pottery of Delhi, before it is lost forever. 7.2. Bibliographical References Atasoy, Nurhan & Raby Julian Iznik, The Pottery of Ottoman Turkey. India's Artisans: A Status Report (Published By: SRUTI: Society for Rural, Urban and Tribal Initiatives). Monograph on the Pottery and Glass Industries of The Punjab: 1890-91 (Published at: Civil and Military Gazette Press). Mukherji, T. N., Art Manufacutures of India. Powell, Baden, Handbook on The Manufactures and Arts of The Punjab. Singh, Gurucharan, Pottery In India.

History of the craft Even though the exact origin of blue and white pottery in India is not known. Its transition in technique and design can be deduced. However, it would be difficult to say with certainty if the travelling armies, or trading convoys carried glazed tiles for architectural purposes from Lahore and Multan or whether craftsmen brought their techniques. Jaipur made its connection with the parent pottery traditions of China and Persia in the 14th century. Tracing the path of influences, it can be said the Central Asian and Middle Eastern glazing techniques came to India with the several successive Islamic invasions while Chinese porcelain continued to be imported to the Indian courts- both pre-Mughal and Mughal.

The extensive use of Blue pottery tiles in mosques of Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and historic Indian monuments tell us about the long journey undertaken by this craft to finally settle down in Jaipur due to Royal patronage. The Jaipur story is much clearer. Man Singh I (1550-1614) was the first to bring the art of blue and white pottery to Jaipur subsequent to his interactions with the Mughals and through his campaigns in Afghanistan. In 1562 Maharaja Sawai Man Singh I offered his sister in marriage to Emperor Akbar, the first example of blue and white tiles in Jaipur is in the Nila Bury at Amber, which can be dated from this period. Having gained from the Mughal alliance with Akbar, both in stature and in wealth, Sawai Man Singh’s able successor Sawai Jai Singh set about laying the foundation of Jaipur in 1727. Lucrative offers were made to craftsmen from everywhere. Those in the neighboring areas and from Delhi, Agra and Mathura were among the first to come. However the death of Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II brought decline and stagnation to the development of blue pottery.

The second Maharaja to bring the art from Delhi was Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh (1835-1880).It was his initiative that the School of Art was established in 1866 at Jaipur and a great revival and rejuvenation of the arts was planned. This work was continued by his successor Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II (1880-1922). During the reign of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II (1837-58) there is a record of a Persian potter at Delhi. It is believed that he taught his art to a potter named Bhola. The kite flying brothers Churamani and Kaluram from Bayana near Bharatpur, who had painted frescoes in Palace of Maharaja Bharatpur were sent to Delhi by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh to learn the art from Bhola. In Jaipur, the two brothers were given a home in Goonga Mehra ki Gals of Gangori Bazar. They were also given hereditary posts in Maharaja School of Art. Churamani’s son Jamuna Prasad and Kaluram’s son Sanwal Singh both worked and taught at the same school.

About Jaipur and Sanganer

Amber - Jaipur the craft capital of Rajasthan lies in the northeast of India. Ruled by some of the most enlightened rulers in Indian history, their patronage of art and architecture is vividly reflected in the works of their time. The city boasts of having some of the finest monuments in the world. Jaipur is called the “The Pink City”, for by law, all the buildings in the old city must be painted a deep saffron pink. Apart from being an important administrative, commercial and educational center, Jaipur has a variety of manufacturing industries. It is especially known for its arts and crafts like jewelry, enamel, hand painted fabric, stone sculpture and blue pottery. The large numbers of unemployed youth from various places near Jaipur were trained at Maharaja Art School to enable them to take this craft as a mode of livelihood. When the school was suddenly closed by Government of India, those artisans had started their own work at their respective places. This is how the craft flourished not only in Jaipur but also in small villages near Jaipur. They are • Neota -28 km from Jaipur; Jamdoli - 20 km away; Mahala at a distance of 37 km; Kotjewar - 60 km and Sanganer the main center for Blue Pottery. Sanganer is a hub of various handcrafts like hand block printing, handmade paper and blue pottery. It is 25 kms from Jaipur on the Tonk road highway. Kalayanpura is 2 kms inside Sanganer where the craft of blue pottery is practiced. It is well connected to Jaipur by road and easily accessible by bus. 50% of the population dependent on farming; however land is being cutup for housing and industrial projects. Land with better soil and water resources, grows both kharif and rabi crop and somewhere vegetables are also grown Rajasthani or dhundhani is the local language here. Rajasthani dialects have the same roots as hindi, and therefore it is not difficult for locals to understand hindi. The preferred colors for costumes are bright red, dazzling yellow, lively green or brilliant orange, highlighted by embroidery withsparkling gold and silver zari or gota. Women wear cholies, lehnga or ghagra and odhani and some women wear saris. The men dress in dhoti, shirt or kurta, turban (safa). The women are usually veiled, the education level is very low, child marriage still exists in the villages of the Rajasthan and there is a strong caste hierarchy. Production Process of Blue pottery

Form Design and colour

The form, colour and decoration seem to be directly influenced by Persian traditional art. It is found in the shape of drinking cups and water jugs, jars, bowls, plates and dishes of all shapes and sizes etc. They are glazed in turquoise, of the most perfect transparency, or in a rich dark purple, or dark green, or golden brown, or yellow. Traditionally the colour palette is restricted to blue, white and a lighter blue. Generally they are ornamented with the universal knot and flower pattern, in compartments formed all around the form, by spaces alternately left uncolored and glazed in color.

Raw material and Production Process Raw material for the body(for an amount equivalent to 47 kgs of prepared body ) Quartz powder: 40 kgs.Rajasthan is the highest producer of the quartz. It is widely available at the cost of Rs. 3 per Kg. Earlier it had to be purchased from Beawar but now is easily available in Jaipur and in powdered form.
White glass powder (cullets) : 5kgs. These are pieces of non-colored glass which can be easily procured at the cost of Rs.14 per Kg. The pieces of glasses are first washed and then crushed. It is then powdered in a hand chakki/grinder and sieved through cotton cloth to avoid big particles.

Saji : 1/2 kgs. It is commonly known as papad knar. An edible soda easily available at cost of Rs. 4-5 per Kg. Multani Mitti ; 1/2 kgs. Easily available at the cost of Rs 8-10 per Kg and purchased in bulk. Katira Gum : 1kgs. It is a resin of a tree and available at the cost of Rs. 150 per Kg. Earlier green glass was used for the body composition that contained lead. It has now been changed to white glass culiets instead of green glass for a stronger, non-toxic body. According to the report, the body strength increased nearly four times from the improved composition and during firing the items do not get blackened. Firing range also becomes broader.

Joinery 1

After moulding and sun drying, it is cleared and then finishing is done with the sandpaper. Then the base of the item is made and attached on the potter’s wheel.A vase, for example, will be madeup in four parts; a wheel turned neck; two molded hemispheres; and a wheel turned base.Every joinery requires sun drying so, article is again kept to sun dry for a day.

Lisai and Ghisai

After sun drying for a whole day, the article is rubbed on a stone and then coarse sandpaper is used for finishing. This is called ‘ghisai’. The finishing is planned in such a way that would require joineries are made thinner than the rest of the body. After sun drying, the finishing is done with the thin solution of basic composition (body) to fill minute cracks and gaps from inside and outside of the item. This is called ‘lisai’.

Joinery 2

Then the two or three pieces to be joined are aligned and stuck with the basic body composition and excess paste is removed from inside. It is leveled using a scale. After the joinery is finished and dried, the exterior is coated with the body slip and finished in the same manner as the interior. The final finishing is again done with finer sandpaper. Once finished, the pieces are coated with asthar (engobe).

Frit

Raw material In 50 Kg of white glass powder we needed other ingredients in given below quantities for the preparation of frit.

White glass powdered: 52 kgs.
Boric Acid : 15 kgs.
Borax : 35 kgs.
Potassium Nitrate : 5kgs.
Zinc Oxide : 3 kgs.

Preparation of Frit

Each ingredient is finely powdered and sifted, mixed with a little water, and made up into white balls of the size of an orange. It is then put in a graphite crucible with a hole at the base. It is heated to a very high temperature in a kiln. Coal is used for firing so that can be reached at the high temperature. Borax reduces the melting point. When all is ready, the mixture is thrown in cold water, which splits it into splinters, which are collected and kept for glazing. This frit is then ground by the women folk of the house.

Glazing

The ground frit is mixed with water to form glaze. Here the consistency is important as too thin glaze will leave the pores exposed and too thick would make the finish matte instead of shining. The items are dipped in the glaze and swirled to remove excess glaze forming an even and uniform layer and then left for drying. These are carefully dried, sometimes indoors to avoid dust and other particles sticking on to the glaze Once the articles are dried it is again checked and glaze is put where it is missing. The article is now ready for firing.

Preparation for firing The kiln furniture consists of plates and props. These are made of locally available terracota clay and fired. Now a days some craftsmen are also using cordierite plates. These new plates claim to reduce the breakage of articles while firing. An added advantage is that these plates remain undamaged for a longer period of time i.e. They have a longer life. The plates are flat and rectangular in shape. Before every firing it is necessary that kiln has to renovate.
	Props are of clay only and in cylindrical shape which are broader at one end. The height of the props varies according to the height of the article that needs to be fired. The object is placed on the plate and then three props are put and they support the next plate that comes on top. In this way all the articles are stacked before firing. The plates have to be coated with a layer of quartz powder before any object is placed on it so that the molten glaze would not stick to the plate. To load a kiln one put has to go inside for the placement of articles. The loading of the kiln, being to centered takes too much time and labour. The central core has to be kept free for heat to move freely.
Firing The traditional kiln which is used for firing is up-draft kiln. In this kiln nearly 600 kg of wood is required for one firing. It has two fireboxes from which from which the burning wood is charged. The heat then travels through the center of the kiln and heats up the kiln. This firing has to be controlled to be gradual, so the items placed inside do not receive a thermal shock. After the required temperature is reached, the charging of wood is stopped as the oxidation starts inside. The heat then travels within the firing chamber from downwards and the open top serves as the exhaust.

In approximately 4-5 hours, the firing is completed. The temperature of kiln reaches to 800° - 820 ° Celsius. To check the progress of the firing, small windows are there around the kiln which remains sealed during the firing. The kiln is left to cool for whole two days and it is opened on the third day. The firing is oxidation firing. The colour is transformed into bright colour by firing. A new down-draft kiln has been developed. This kiln is made up of fire bricks that can be heated upto 1300 degrees. These bricks are good insulators and hence no heat is lost and anyone can stand comfortably close to kiln while firing.

Limitations

Craftsmen do not practice craft in rainy season as sun drying is required after each step in the process.
The throwing skill of artisans is limited because of the material constraints resulting in problems for making thrown moulds for new design.
No standardization of the raw material hence increases in the number of rejections.
Still practicing traditional forms, patterns and colours.
Limited colour palette.
No quality check after each process.
Craftsmen are not involve in packaging.
They use traditional kiln for firing the products.
Craftsmen are not able to control temperature of the kiln resulting in damage to products.
No proper costing

The fabrics, costumes of Gujarat and specially Kutch have attracted a number of writers from all over the world. Many influences through migrations and trade, led to the evolution of a way of life, which has richness and variety that gets reflected in their arts, crafts, ritual observations and rites of passage. The repertoire of techniques, designs, motifs is quite distinctive. Eiluned Edwards' book "Textiles and Dress of Gujarat has added to the innumerable publications. Each one had made contributions, with perhaps the most important in the seminal work of Jyotindra Jain in his catalogue for the Shreyas Museum. Vicky Elson's, "Dowries of Kutch", drew a lot of people to investigate the richness of the Kutch environment. Ofcourse, Judy Frater's contribution at many levels cannot be matched. Emma Tarlo broke new ground by examining the interconnection of the "Webs of Trade, Dynamics of Business Communities in Western India", as well as the changing social dynamics in which the apparel plays an important role. This publication has been very well researched and has a plethora of information, which would be very useful to researcher and students of textiles. It has succeeded to carry us from the past to the contemporary scene, but as can happen when far too much information is included in a publication, the more interesting facts are lost sight of. It is good that, the author explains the formation of "Modern Gujarat", which I think no other publication on textiles has done, but she should have gone into a little more depth. What is lacking in the sweep of history is the author has forgotten the impact of Central Asia from where many tribes migrated from the very early times by the land route and created a rich culture. Traces of these rich cultures can be seen even today. The importance of the links between Multan for trading with Central Asia and the Steppes from Ashkhabad, north of Caspian, could have been touched upon. Her chapter on Contemporary Dress where she explores "caste and community: modesty adornment and auspiciousness and pollution" is very well written. Her chapter on Constructed Textiles starts off with an interesting title "Fabrics of the Gods" and one thought we would get now some more interesting details, but again it is a collection of facts without any depth. We do not learn anything of the Dar-al-Tiraz of the beginning of the Islamic period, the movement of master weavers, the movement of Brocade from Syria and Bokhara, the Nakshabandhas who arrived in Surat and spread all over India. The embroidery chapter lacks the in-depth writings of other authors such as Rosemary Crill, Nasreen Askari, Gillows nor does it tackle the impact of the prohibitions on bead work and later embroidery by the Rabari community. The embroidery of Saurashtra, which has a rich tradition, does not feature at all. Craft Development and Entrepreneurship goes into the situation as it exists today and the appendix, which carries out the analysis of the construction of the garment, is excellent. In the breathless haste to cram all the information into the publication, she failed to bring out significant facts. If she had paused for a moment, she could have added certain details of the significance about some professions, of techniques, of rituals, of rites of passage. This would have added a dimension to the book, which would have carried it beyond a just an intensively researched publication. Had she put in a line to indicate that the nomadic namda makers, the Mansooris were Sufis, descendents of nomads of Central Asia and how the rhythm of zikr and namda making were linked. The patolas used as ritual objects were not only important in Gujarat, but played an important part in South East Asia. The significance of Ajrak the blue from Arabic, and its traversing half the world and perhaps being linked to the fragment of mordant dyed Harappan fragment found adhering to a silver jug, would have made us sit and pay greater attention to it. However, Ms. Edwards is to be congratulated in the wide coverage, which puts the study of Textiles & Dress of Gujarat in context. The richly illustrated book looses out because the layout is very poor and some photographs are repeated. Often the illustration is out of context and has no bearing with the text. The greatest strength of the publication is a fairly extensive research and the fact that it has been very well edited by Carmen Kagel.

Sometimes repetitive, occasionally slipping into cliche, Anu Gupta and Shalina Mehta's book is nevertheless an important addition to the documentation of Indian embroidery. [caption id="attachment_198003" align="alignnone" width="747"]

The phulkari was both an art form and a powerful means of self-expression for otherwise non-literate Punjabi women. Photo: Author provided[/caption] The phulkari was both an art form and a powerful means of self-expression for otherwise non-literate Punjabi women. Photo: Author provided The sizzling, vibrant orange, ochre and pink satin-floss geometrics of Punjabi phulkari, once seen can never be forgotten. That redoubtable 18th century Indian Memsaab, Flora Anne Steele, talking about the Phulkari embroidery of Punjab, called it “A work of faith, savouring somewhat of sowing in the red-brown soil.” There can never be enough books on Indian Embroidery! No country has as many traditions and techniques, varying from region to region, community to community, as India, each uniquely itself but also unmistakably part of the Indian aesthetic. Phulkari too, its origins in Central Asia, was transformed by the culture and rustic dynamism of the women of Punjab into something distinctively Punjabi. Anu Gupta and Shalina Mehta, the authors of Phulkari from Punjab: Embroidery in Transition, are both from the Department of Anthropology at Punjab University, Chandigarh. One did her PhD there and the other was a faculty member of 40 years standing. Anu Gupta is currently an assistant professor at the University’s Institute of Fashion Technology and Vocational Development. Embroidery is a form of ornamentation and also earning for many communities; but equally importantly a needle and thread tells stories – of the flora and fauna, seasons and lifestyles that are the backdrop to the battles and dynasties listed in our history books. The appearance in a kantha or phulkari of a train, motorcar, or airplane illustrates the transition of transport from bullock carts and horseback to aviation more vividly than countless pages of prose.

Anu H. Gupta and Shalina Mehta Phulkari From Punjab: Embroidery in Transition Niyogi Books, 2019

Over the decades the phulkari was both an art form and a powerful means of self-expression for otherwise non-literate Punjabi women. Guru Nanak in his scriptures stereotyped the notion of embroidery as a woman’s duty to establish her feminine worth (“Kadh kasida pahreh choli tan tu jane nari,”) but phulkari was much more than proving ones skills with a needle. As the authors say, embroidery could be subversive too, “translating unsaid emotions on fabric”. A phulkari ordhani was a heavy, all-concealing way of shrouding a woman’s shape and identity but the story its motifs and design told was all her own. As Jasleen Dhamija wrote in her beautiful autobiographical essay in my book Threads and Voices, the traditional Baghs and Phulkaris were all about women. Not only did they spin the cotton and often dye the cloth on which it was embroidered, but they were the ones who designed and wore it. They may never have travelled or seen the flowering gardens they depicted, but they created “their dream garden, their dream flowers” and “associated them with the ceremonies of rites of passage.” – marriage, childbirth, celebration… Even the embroidered phulkari of their shroud, dipped in the purifying waters of the Ganga, fulfilled “their desire to be wrapped in their dream garden of flowers for their final journey”. The story behind the stitches of Indian embroidery is both a parable and a paradox: craft traditions are a unique mechanism for rural men and women entering the urban economic mainstream for the first time, but they also carry the stigma of inferiority and backwardness as India enters a period of hi-tech industrialisation and urbanisation. Phulkari is a classic example. Once an essential part of every Punjabi bride’s trousseau, a sign of her skills and upbringing, embroidery became a stigma that educated, wealthy girls should eschew. As a result, authentic phulkari odhanis are seldom seen today. Most so-called phulkari (often from Haryana or Rajasthan) is a travesty – crude satin-stitch, the embroidery done from the front with the motifs block printed on georgette or voile, rather than with counted thread darning stitch done on the reverse of madder-dyed khadi, its threads hand-woven especially to facilitate the counted stitches. Each piece was a unique creation, with its own layouts and motifs, inspired by the dreams as well as the life of the maker. Eight-pointed lotuses and marigold flowers mixed with cotton bolls, cauliflowers and chillies, fields of wheat, goats and cows, and even jewellery and coins. Women churning butter, peacocks dancing, a scorpion or snake to avert the evil eye, a wedding party riding in a train, children flying kites…. Abstract geometrics combined with aspirational illustrations, each with its own song, women singing and stitching together. Charmingly if a visitor joined the group, she would add a motif or a few stitches, but in a different colour or idiom. [caption id="attachment_198005" align="alignnone" width="560"]

Photo: Author provided[/caption] The best thing about Gupta and Mehta’s slim volume are the women who emerge from its pages. And the rituals the phulkaris were made for. Many books on craft describe the tradition, the techniques, the ornamentation, the objects themselves – but forget about the makers. Without the who and why and when, the before and after, the story of craft remains lifeless. As is the case with phulkari itself. Now that the women themselves are no longer the creators, the embroidery has lost its joyous vitality and become mechanical. Sometimes repetitive, occasionally slipping into cliche, Phulkari from Punjab: Embroidery in Transition is nevertheless an important addition to the documentation of Indian embroidery. Each thread is traced, from its origin to its final usage. The illustrations too, honestly portray the story of phulkari – both the glory of its heydey to its present decline.

A man who says firmly at 85 that the loss of idealism is "unacceptable." We mourn his passing. L C Jain's posthumously published autobiography, lovingly put together by his son while LC lay dying, poignantly evokes his voice - always inspirational, never chastising. It also brings vividly to life a persona and an era that has much to teach us - as India flounders even as a handful of Indians flourish. "If our political class cannot give any inspiration or courage to anybody, how will our civilisation survive?" Jain asks. "We will break something of enduring value; we will injure the best interests of humanity." I first met LC 30 years ago. A group of us were brainstorming ways to bring Indian craft back into the economic and cultural centre-stage. Someone suggested we meet LC Jain. I remember that first meeting - his beautiful expressive face alight with enthusiasm and the conviction we COULD do something. It was he who gave Dastkar its name, urging that it was the craftsperson, the 'Dastkar', that must be our core and motivation, not just "reviving beautiful craft". His wit and wisdom illuminated every discussion, making Gandhian economics not only possible, but the only possible option. His years travelling India with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya as his mentor, setting up the Handicrafts Board, the Indian Cooperative Union, and the Central Cottage Industries Emporium, serving on the Planning Commission, helped signpost opportunities, highlight problems. He knew that simple practical details were as important as the long-term vision. A characteristic anecdote has him offering a tearful Partition refugee a bath and shave - as important to the young man's self-belief as promises of housing and jobs. As in his book, he taught us to avoid fuzzy sentimentality and table-thumping, encouraging one to look beyond policy to practice, and to analyse both Government schemes and Government implementation with objective rigour. The gap between the two, even in the idealistic early post-Independence days, chronicled by him in CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, makes sorry reading. The seeds of corruption, nepotism, extra-constitutional cronyism, institutions that only perpetuated themselves, and centralised, top-down planning whose benefits never reached the supposed beneficiaries, were sown right from 1947. The saga of Chattarpur and Faridabad, communities conceived as utopian models of cooperative development, and begun with great passion and optimism, but eventually destroyed by red-tape, political infighting, and venality, is a dismal paradigm of the failures and flaws of Indian governance. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE should be mandatory reading for bureaucrats and politicians. The book's title - CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: Two Freedom Struggles, One Life, is itself a powerful metaphor. LC was always civil (except for the early bomb carrying forays of his student days - shocking to me, who knew him as a non-violent visionary!) but he never toed anyone's line - whether the much-admired Nehru of his youth or the External Affairs Ministry mandarins when he was, much later, India's High Commissioner in South Africa, appalled at the explosion of India's nuclear device. And when he serendipitously discovered true love with Devaki, he promptly broke off his previous engagement - equally civilly but firmly! As he makes clear in this book, the struggle for India's soul and individual human freedoms came much harder than the initial Independence from the British. One by one, his dreams turned into disillusionment - the Cooperative and Panchayat movements, Bhoodan land redistribution, Swadeshi, democratic decentralisation, the Gandhian system of basic education combining vocational as well as conventional schooling. All were destroyed by official apathy, motivated self-interest, or shoddy practice. Indira Gandhi's Emergency, and the expediency with which not only Congress politicians but most of civil society passively accepted it, followed by the broken promises and disintegration of the Janata Government which succeeded it, is a gripping chapter, tellingly entitled "Democracy Died at Midnight". The battle for equitable decentralised governance of a truly free India was an ongoing crusade he fought all his long life, until his last breath. A crusade he increasingly felt he was losing. LC's gentle loving ways belied his steely intellect and conviction, his total integrity. He always expected the best of people and as a result, willy-nilly we all DID become better and more brilliant! CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE is full of people, known and unknown, who were moved out of themselves by his persuasive charm and ended up doing extraordinary things: from Pathan refugees, once prosperous traders, who found themselves constructing their own houses, to Nehru finding time post-Partition to personally push reluctant ICS-wallahs into relinquishing their ill-gotten land for refugee housing, and Biju Patnaik flying his own plane to bring in Indonesian delegates to the first Asian Relations Conference. And everyone - Sarojini Naidu, Desmond Tutu, obdurate Gujjars asked to live side-by-side with Punjabi immigrants, even a deeply resistant Tamil Brahmin father-in-law, ended up loving him! CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: Two Freedom Struggles, One Life is a portrait of an extraordinary man and the extraordinary, rapidly changing times he lived in. It begins in an era when the village postman came on horseback, with a trishul to guard the postbag, and ends in the age of the Blackberry and email -things LC used most effectively! He saw the transformation of the Congress party from a selfless grassroots national movement into what he called the Bata Shoe Company, "where the proprietor appoints dealers who appoint sub-dealers." However despairing, he effortlessly segued these differing epochs, cultures, values, and mindsets, without ever losing his own integrity and compassion - truly a man for all seasons. Even on his sickbed, in the last few difficult months, he thought of the larger picture, of others... From his bedside, came a flood of messages. The tragedy of Kashmir obsessed him. Planning what could be done kept him going. We promised him to try. "Sweetheart, you have made my heart dance," he messaged a few days before his death, when I told him the success of our young women's group from Baramullah. We will try to keep the torch he lit on his hospital bed burning, attempting to bring light and hope into the lives of young Kashmiri craftspeople, just as HE lit up OUR lives over the years. That torch burns brightly in this inspirational book. Read it. Pub: The Book Review Literary Trust. pp: 266. Price Rs 395.00. January, 2011

I always have two open books on the round antique table in my hallway, chosen for their illustrations and subjects. They vary from month to month. There is a small horn-rimmed magnifying glass so visitors can examine the intricate details of courtly life in the Azimuth Edition of Shah Jehan's PADSHAHNAMA or the magical Machlipatnam kalamkari Trees of Life in Martand Singh's HANDCRAFTED INDIAN TEXTILES. Another week there could be Pauline van Leyden's sensitive photographic collages of RAJASTHAN or B N Goswamy's NAINSUKH OF GULER. Everyone, from visiting friends to the plumber and the policeman checking my passport details, stops to take a look - most find it difficult to pull themselves away. A universal favourite has been Aditi and M R Ranjan's amazing HANDMADE IN INDIA, a gloriously illustrated and detailed encyclopedia of Indian Crafts, co-published a few years ago by NID and the Development Commissioner (Handicrafts) Office. Now Jaya Jaitly's vibrant CRAFT ATLAS OF INDIA will also find a place. The two books have much in common - including their almost overwhelming weight and volume! Both are a compendium of Indian craft traditions; both group these geographically rather than by technique or material. This makes sense since so many Indian crafts owe their origin to local socio-cultural practice, or the availability locally of a specific raw material. It also means that mini-states like Goa or Pondicherry, usually ignored by craft researchers, find a place. Jaya Jaitly's book is more individual and anecdotal, the Ranjan book more exhaustive; stronger on technique and technology. What makes the CRAFT ATLAS OF INDIA so distinctive is the use of crafts idioms and folk art in the books design. These derive their inspiration from the stunning and evocative Crafts Maps that Jaya has developed over the past 2 decades. Starting with an All India map they are now 24 of them - each state being illustrated in the craft technique for which the state is best known. So papier-mache painting for Kashmir, for instance, and Madhubani for Bihar. This is a brilliant idea, and makes each map (or the corresponding title page for each section in the atlas) an exuberantly evocative work of art. Sadly, in the Atlas, fitting the image to the format of a double page spread has necessitated slicing bits of the text off the sides - with occasionally jarring results. Unlike the NID HANDMADE IN INDIA, which was the result of years of funded institutional research, the CRAFT ATLAS is Jaya's labour of love, done in the midst of a hectic professional and political life, using her Dastkari Haat Samiti organization (to whom the book is dedicated) as her main source. So there are obviously gaps and variations in emphasis, information, and inclusion, some of them subjective. Delhi for instance, gets much more attention than Chennai or Kolkota, even to listings of her pick of craft emporia and boutiques, a useful addition that is missing for other cities and states. And, while Jaya quite naturally includes her own charming Dastkari Haat Khan Market shop, as well as SANTUSHTI and TRIBES, it's surprising to find no mention of the KAMALA shop run by the Crafts Council, which stocks some of the best and most beautifully displayed craft in town, the re-vamped National Museum store, THE SHOP (which pioneered contemporized, crafted home accessories in the '60s), Kamayani Jalan's Alladin's Cave of textiles and crafts in Anandlok, or the amazing JIYO sample room at the Asia Heritage Foundation. Other surprise omissions are the wonderful Sanskriti Terracotta, Textile and Everyday Art museums at Anandgram, set in sylvan surroundings and full of stunning crafted objects; beautifully curated and maintained, and refreshingly different to the more institutional brand of sarkari museums. The photographs do not purport to represent the "best and finest" examples of each style and skill, but give the reader a general idea of the textile or craft, and sometimes of the craftsperson in the process of making it. The effect is an impressionist overview of the range and variety of Indian craft skills rather than a comprehensive encyclopedia of every Indian technique and tradition. The photograph of Lucknavi chikan white-work embroidery for instance, has a very pedestrian example of bakhia shadow-work, with none of the jaali work and interplay of over 25 different stitches that gives chikan its unique character and quality. Nevertheless, while each of us might cavil at what is left out, or how our favourite craft has been presented, the CRAFT ATLAS is not only a visual delight, but a very useful aid to anyone attempting to encompass craft in the sub-continent. It's an on-going shocker that such information and precise data, whether for the tourist or researcher, in a sector which should be India's pride, is not generally available. As always, one is stunned by how many crafts still exist in India thirteen years into the 21st century, despite the pressures of globalization and industrialization, and the corresponding marginalization of Indian craftspeople. All of us in the sector, quite naturally, obsess endlessly about the numerous threats to the survival of craft (15 to 18% of India's craftspeople leave the sector in search for more lucrative employment every decade), but so much does remain, just waiting to be properly invested in and supported. We sometimes forget too, how the efforts of Government, NGOs, and private entrepreneurs, has resulted not only in preserving but mainstreaming many otherwise unknown and localized skills, and how much better off we are in this regard than our neighbours in Nepal, Pakistan or Sri Lanka. Though we may complain about the rigidity and disfunctionality of Government Departments and Schemes for crafts and textiles, at least we have them! My mother loved and used craft all her life in both her home and her wardrobe, but the range of Bomkai, kasuti, and kantha embroidery saris, Lambani and Rabari mirrorwork, sujni bedspreads, Kutchi cutwork leather, Gond and Warli painting, banana fibre, ajrakh resist-dye printing, Bhujodi shawls, Bhagalpur and Maheshwar textiles, Mathura papercuts, Bastar dhokra and bell metal tableware, and a myriad other skills, textiles, and products that we take for granted, were certainly not accessible to her in Delhi or Hyderabad in the 50s and 60s - and the only chamba rumals and kani shawls around were antique pieces. At the same time of course, many of the crafts, textiles and objects that were a commonplace in my grandmother's home and wardrobe in the 20s and 30s are longer extant. The story of contemporary Indian craft is full of ups and downs, both sad and celebratory; and the winners and losers keep changing! One of the most interesting parts of the CRAFTS ATLAS is the introductory text in which Jaya traces the various socio-historic streams of Indian craft, and the way in which India's multiple cultures and geographies have led to this amazing diversity of materials and traditions. Invoking the well-known Francois Pyrard de Laval quote on how in the 17th century "Everyone from the Cape of Good Hope to China, man and woman, is clothed from head to foot in the product of Indian Looms", she introspects on how India became this cornucopia of craft skills, and why these declined from being the wonder of the world into their present disadvantaged state. How wonderful if the phoenix were to rise again from the flames, and Indian crafts and textiles (and the craftspeople and weavers who make them) regained that premier place in the global marketplace! This monumental and lovingly put together book will certainly aid those of us working to that end. In a PS, (in case I am suspected of plugging my own publication) I should add that the Dastkari Haat Samiti is quite separate to my own organization, Dastkar! Jaya was one of the six original Dastkar founders, and when she left to form her own organization she added Dastkar to its name. The two organizations, while both working with craftspeople, are quite separate, something that occasionally causes some confusion! First published in the Book Review April 2013.

Gujarat and its craftspeople have been an integral part of my life since I chugged into Bhuj station 35 years ago on the metre gauge train from Kandla and - excitedly, nervously - took a tonga to my new assignment at the GURJARI. A barren, dust brown landscape burnt by the blazing, cloudless sun - duned and rippled with the restless movement of the wind. Against the horizon, dwarfed by its scale, a line of men and women led camels: swaying, pouting and sullen, padding deliberate hooves in the shifting sands. The women shrouded in faded black wool; the men in pleated and gathered peacock ruffles of crumpled, once-white homespun cotton. Beneath the dusty layers, the glint of colourful mirrored embroidery, and heavy silver and ivory ornaments. The arrogant, straight-backed stride sent out a message that the poverty and rootlessness of a nomadic people did not destroy their sense of self. I was a young designer who had only lived and worked in the metro cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Tokyo. For me, Kutch was an extraordinary, eye-opening experience. I had never realized that beautiful craft and creativity could spring from such austere beginnings, and that women who toiled from morning to night in the fields could still labour for months embroidering an exquisite mirror-work blouse for their daughter. It was moving to see how important aesthetic was for even the poorest villager - every utensil, textile and surface covered with motif and colour in every medium - from mud and mirrored glass to the carved wooden spokes of their camel cart wheels. Amazing hand skills transforming utilitarian usages into art forms. Waste materials casually twisted and shaped into magical treasures. Coarse goats hair woven into a shawl with a tie-dyed sunburst motif; rags patch-worked into a pattern of tiny, quilted stars and lozenges; torn chindis transformed into stunning patchwork quilts; mud, cow dung, and broken mirrors transformed into murals of fabulous birds and beasts and flowers. How beautifully the men and women dressed and coiffured their hair, even though they had to walk miles for a bucket of water! Kutch is a truly incredible experience. It is not surprising that it has inspired and motivated so many. Eiluned Edwards, the author of TEXTILES & DRESS OF GUJARAT, is only one of a band of intrepid foreign women who has been traveling, researching and writing about Kutchhi textiles and crafts for over two decades - Judy Frater, Vicky Elson, Caroline Douglas, Charlotte Kwon, Michele Hardy, Maggie Baxter….. drawn by the irresistible lure of its unique socio-cultural mix. Nor is it surprising that Kutch dominates so much of this book on Gujarat! What interested Eiluned Edwards was the "sense of history attached with all that is handmade". Her book explores "the social function of textiles, not just embroidery and fancy, but also their intellectual context, the fact that they are turning it into a source of income generation," she says. The mata-ni-pacheri cloth paintings of the Vagharis of Ahmedabad, for instance, once part of ritual practice, now transformed into sarees and cushion covers. Originally trained as a designer, Eiluned Edwards was a senior research fellow at the V&A and is now a senior lecturer in Design and Visual Culture at Nottingham Trent University. She has been researching the production and consumption of textiles and dress in India over the last 20 years, and has contributed actively in the revival and preservation of many traditions and techniques. Her support was one of the enabling factors in the creation of the block printing village of New Ajrakhpur after the Kutch earthquake decimated the homes and livelihoods of scores of traditional ajrakh resist block printers, and she has been a consultant to SHRUJJAN, one of the major local NGOs working with Kutchi embroideries - appropriately, since her thesis on "The Desert and the Sewn: Textiles and Dress of the Rabari of Kachchh," secured her a PhD in Art History and Archaeology from Manchester University. Her latest publication, TEXTILES & DRESS OF GUJARAT, examines how textiles and dress, which have always defined Indian social identity, are changing in both rural and urban Gujarat, with the advent and impact of industrialization and globalization. Traditionally in India, as she says, "little about dress is random; textiles and clothing are a powerful form of non-verbal communication that has been harnessed into a complex symbolic language". This is an area which has always fascinated her and she has written previously on 'Hair, Devotion and Trade in India,' Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion, (2008); and 'Marriage and Dowry Customs of the Rabari of Kachchh,' Wedding Dress Across Cultures". She quotes Nehru's remark that 'the history of India may well be written with textiles as its leading motif.' India's extraordinary textiles were once part of the tribute paid by regional satraps to the emperors. The book is full of fascinating little nuggets - for instance in Kutch, ajrakh resist fabrics are worn by men, while across the Indo- Pak border, in Sindh, they are worn by the women. Tattoos and mirrors avert the evil eye, and the unadorned body signifies renunciation. Formerly, Hindu orthodoxy looked at tailored clothing as "traps for impurity", while Muslims, instructed in the Koran to cover all parts of the body, regarded India's unstitched, draped garments as "barbaric". In most Gujarati communities today, men have adopted the western "shirt pant" but women still cling to their traditional costumes. For both sexes, clothing defines who they think they are and how they want to be perceived by other people. Eiluned Edward's canvas encompasses the contemporary production of traditional block-printed, woven, tie-dye bandini, and embroidered textiles, and the use of natural dyes in Gujarat - the rationale behind the disappearance of some and the revival of others; caused by shifts in lifestyles, markets, and social practice. For example, local conditions or the availability of appropriate raw material play a huge part in craft production: the waters of the Sabarmati suited block printing and dyeing; now that the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation is commercially redeveloping the river front, the craft is dying. The book also explores the developmental role of the many state agencies and non-governmental organizations working in the craft and design sector in Gujarat, and how adequately these have sustained once-dying crafts and impacted socially and economically on craft communities. By rationalizing and mass-producing designs, sizes, and colours, and converting freehand embroidery into tracings and printed transfers, have they destroyed the creative wellspring of the textiles while professionalizing them? The Garacia Jats, who never allowed outsiders access to their embroidery, now cross-stitch once sacrosanct motifs onto sandal straps! A fascinating section is on how embroidery, which was once the bench mark of a Kutchhi or Saurashtrian woman's femininity and domestic attributes, is now seen as primarily a wage earner, with the women themselves wearing mill prints and polyester. In some communities, such as the Dhebariya Rabaris, embroidery has even been proscribed - regarded as an enemy to women's development. My only disappointment with this enthralling book is the production and design: especially surprising in a publication which has craft and design as its core, and bearing the MAPIN imprint! The layout is random and unattractive, with wide blank white spaces in some places and in others, the photographs (also not all of the first quality), bleeding off the page, and disappearing into the binding. But this is a minor caveat in an otherwise illuminating, wide-ranging, and well researched book. It will be required reading for all of us in the field. 35 years since I first arrived in Gujarat, much has changed, as has Kutch. It is difficult for textile and costume to remain a purely cultural statement as earthquake relief schemes and the tourist trade combine to make every second Kutchhi a craft entrepreneur. Well-meaning NGOs and exploitative middlemen proliferate, sending out conflicting, market-driven messages. The sprawling villages, with their thatched round bungas and mud-mirror murals, have given way to rows of little concrete boxes built by well-intentioned but insensitive donor agencies after the 2001 earthquake. The Bhuj market in the old walled city, now a jungle of high rise concrete, hoardings and tangled electric wires, is a-flood with sub-standard tat - the embroidery traditions of a dozen different communities cobbled together in a khichdi of crude, chemical-dyed, floss stitches and thick, machine cut mirrors. Reliance Industries and the Chinese, always quick to sense an opportunity, are producing machine-embroidered and mill-printed versions of traditional tie-dyed and mashru brocade textiles. Nevertheless, despite all the erosions and incursions of globalization and industrialization, Kutch remains a unique micro-culture in the midst of an increasingly urbanized homogenous Gujarat, where traditional textiles and dress survive only if they find alternative commercial markets. For the Khatris, Rabaris, Meghwals, Jats, Ahirs and Sodha Rajputs and all the other Kutchhi communities, costume remains cultural identity, and textile and craft are not merely a production process. Transcending the limitations of environment and income to re-craft their universe is a creative skill and strength that is uniquely theirs - an individual statement of their identity, culture and being. Too often today, the celebration of cultural ethnicity is perceived as being in conflict with a modern, casteless, secular society. Kutch disproves that theory. Eiluned Edward's book signposts both our past and future. Pub: V&A Publishing, in association with MAPIN . 2011. pp: 248 with 243 colour photographs, maps and line drawings. First published in the BOOK REVIEW, June, 2012

THE INDIAN LOOM- A FORGOTTEN EPISODE

Dr Lotika Varadarajan is a passionate and quietly determined scholar whose seminal work on Indian textile and cultural traditions is a must-read for all of us. Her recent talk on the Indian Loom was awe-inspiring but also sad. Awe-inspiring because of the sheer range, diversity and technical virtuosity of Indian looms as well as the different textiles woven on them; sad because so many are already lost to us, while others are being abandoned for the ubiquitous but soulless Jacquard and Tara looms - often with active government encouragement. Sad too to see the depressingly low audience turnout - barely 20 people. A paradigm perhaps of the public's complacent indifference towards India's unique heritage of traditional skill sets. In her introduction, Dr Varadarajan ruefully compared this with the way China, Japan and Europe document and preserve their heritage knowledge systems.Starting with an image of a pair of 3rd Century wooden spindles, Dr Varadarajan took us on an illustrated gallop through the many different looms across India -from the incredibly complex Kashmir kani weaving and their exquisitely penned talim weaving manual (an artwork in itself) to the jaala of Banaras and jamdaani of Bengal and the multiple pedal and shaft loom of Gujarat, and up again to Kinnaur, then the pit and panja looms of Rajasthan and Punjab, and the loin looms of the North East. Each corner of India developed its own distinctive loom, suitable to the local raw materials and wearing styles of the area. Hands and feet as well as treadles, shafts, pedals and pattern sticks, women as well as men, play a vital part in creating each woven pattern and fabric.When presented with a feast, one always wants more! Close-ups of the weaves produced by each type of loom, something about the weavers who use them. And a bigger audience, responding to the richness of incredible India. Those who weren't at the lecture, read Dr Varadarajan's recent book OF FIBRE AND LOOM , written in collaboration with the textile designer Krishna Amin-Patel, and published by Manohar Publishers. Speaker: Dr Lotika Varadarajan, art and cultural historian IIC in Collaboration with: Craft Revival Trust - August 9, 2010 Reveiwer - Laila Tyabji

The Kotpad adivasi weavers have managed to keep both tribal and urban consumers happy. Will the good times last? On a cold winter evening, I stepped into the Kotpad adivasi textiles stall displaying shawls and saris in white and red, replete with animal and bird motifs at the Dastkari Haat Samiti Mela at Dilli Haat. Far removed from their traditional adivasi haats in Bastar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, were National Awardee-couple Jema and Goverdhan Panika. I was fascinated by the sophistication of the textiles and intrigued that they attracted both the adivasi and the urban consumer. How did this hitherto-insulated vibrant textile tradition of Koraput transpose itself to these distant urban settings? How are the weavers handling these varied markets and consequently, the altered design template? The coarse cotton yarn, ranging from 10 to 20 counts was woven into varied products by the tribals of the region, such as the tuval (towel), luga or paata (sari), dhoti, shawl etc. The Panika caste weavers employed a highly evolved weaving technique of three shuttle pit looms with extra weft patterning, looms of different sizes ranging from 15 to 52 inches, and a minimalist colour palette of natural dyes — white (colour of the bleached yarn), red from the roots of the aal tree (Morinda citrifolia), and black. Kotpad is one of the last few remaining textile traditions, which still use only natural dyes. Harvested in the deep forests by the Muria, Koya, Bhatra, Gadaba and Paroja and other adivasis, women of the Panika weavers’ families extract the red dye from aal roots. [caption id="attachment_188721" align="alignleft" width="264"]

KotpadTH1[/caption] [caption id="attachment_188722" align="alignleft" width="157"]

KotpadTH2[/caption] Jema Panika learnt the art of making dyes when she was 10 years old. She also learnt the craft of yarn processing with dung, wood ash and castor oil. The month-long arduous processing is so sophisticated that, despite the use of castor oil, there is no residual oily sheen or smell. Instead, the cloth becomes soft, the colours are lustrous and fast and the yarn withstands repeated daily washing in the stream. National Award-winner Kapileshwar Mohonto points out that the adivasis are extremely finicky and demand a high standard for the cloth they buy. If the cloth did not last a minimum of two years, the name of the weaver was mud; nobody would talk to him in the haat, and no forest product was ever sold to him nor any cloth bought from him. This has ensured high quality of dyeing and weaving. Special saris with their distinct muhs or end pieces and laden with specific motifs served as visual identity markers of the wearers. There is the most minimalist sari — the saada paata, which consisted of a white body with aal red border with two muh for daily wear; the more elaborate wedding saris — of the bride, her mother (mae luga) and bride’s sister (saas paata), sundermani paata, kabori paata, taraf paata, lagan paata — these saris mark the rites of passage in a woman’s life. The dimensions of the sari too varied from the short knee-length eight haath (one haath is the length from fingertips to elbow) to the ankle-length 16 haath. The motifs were visual cultural codes, common as well as unique, specific to each tribe. Common motifs are the kumbh, which continues to be the most common and sacred motif across the region, phool cheetah chowk of the wedding saris and the sacred axe possibly of the Paroja tribes. The motif of the palanquin bearers possibly came from the Gadaba tribals. This sophisticated textile tradition lay undiscovered and unsung in the jungles of Central India, until the Festival of India’s Viswakarma exhibitions in the early 1980s. But post-1980, with the opening up of distant urban markets and the continued support of the Odisha government, beginning with its Kalingavastra programme and the Weavers Service Centres, the Kotpad textiles have transformed into a modern-day trade cloth for urban markets. A modern design template has evolved from the traditional — the tuval is now a stole, the short eight-haath paata is now a six-yard sari with only one muh draped in the Nivi style, the hunting shawl is now a dupatta with tribal motifs. Yardage is new and has no traditional equivalent. So are the new colours such as blue, purple and yellow and the finer yarn counts of 100 to 200, as well as mixtures of tussar silk and cotton. Varied marketing outlets sell Kotpad. One major outlet is Boyanika. Then there are the urban craft melas such as Dilli Haat, Dastkari Haat Samiti, Surajkund Crafts Mela, CAPART’s Saras, shops like Kamala, and boutiques. The weaver has, until now, successfully handled the demands of the two opposing markets without altering the original template. But the future is full of challenges like the increasing shortage and migration of weavers, skyrocketing prices of cotton yarn, increasing preference for cheaper synthetic saris, as well as the limited availability of aal root. With barely 25 to 30 full-time active weavers, production is necessarily limited. The sustainable extraction of aal, if not addressed immediately, will result in the adoption of chemical dyes. But on the whole, Kotpad textiles, unlike many other dying traditions, is a success story.

First Published - The Hindu. Features/ Sunday Magazine - July 6, 2013

https://youtu.be/1mzzVfNoC7U

For the past two years, I have been working with a team of folk artists and craftspeople to generate awareness about Indian folk art and craft traditions amongst schoolchildren in New Delhi. During the course of one such interaction, a teacher asked why we needed to do something like this? At first, I was totally perplexed -why did she feel the need to ask this question? Was it because of a perception that in this intensely technological world, there is no space for people who work with their hands? Are the artists and artisans seen as carriers of a fossilized tradition? In this wired and unwired world, are these people redundant? This article is essentially an attempt to answer the all-important why? Why is it necessary to create spaces where the young can view and learn aspects of their cultural heritage? Why is it critical that we work towards preserving and promoting the arts and crafts of India and the people who practice them? Why is it necessary to bring culture to the classroom?

Perhaps a closer look at one of my motivations to undertake such an endeavour will provide some clues. As a mother of an eight year old, I realized that with the children's quota of Barbie dolls (very hard to resist), Western and Japanese cartoons, video-games, studies and sports, art and craft was somehow slipping away. Sure, children saw some evidence of Indian art and craft when we took them to Dilli Haat or the Crafts Museum. - I watched how captivated they were at the lac bangle maker's stall, how eagerly they reached out for the clay at the potter's stall, impatient to try their luck at the potter's wheel. But these encounters were not too frequent and sadly, not for long - there were always too many people waiting or parents needed to be someplace else. Sure there were some schools which promoted art, craft and creativity but close encounters with living traditional practitioners was not a frequent occurrence. The idea then was born that perhaps we could take these artists and artisans to the schools where the children could engage with them and learn not merely aspects of a craft or art but view these artisans with new found respect. Many children had little exposure to the finer nuances of India's vast heritage of arts and crafts and more frighteningly, they had very limited awareness and respect for the tremendous reservoir of knowledge present in our artistic and craft traditions. For instance, traditional folk artists and textile artists have a wealth of knowledge of natural dyes and colours while bamboo artisans know when and why certain bamboo need to be harvested. The artists have a wealth of information gleaned from various sources - oral traditions, epics and legends. In bringing the artists/artisans and the children together, we would be providing a platform where these knowledge systems could be highlighted, where children could consider alternative world-views. Another reason why it is critical to promote such interactions is the whole notion of preserving our traditional heritage. Should traditional crafts and arts go the way of the dodo - become extinct because they no longer fit the paradigm of our times? This is a complicated issue because in the first place, who decides whether these traditions fit or not? Also, do these traditions remain static or are some of them dynamic, adapting to the times and changing accordingly? What are the parameters of heritage? All these are debatable but the fact remains that aspects of material culture can be preserved and promoted for posterity. One way to do this is to keep the material culture vibrant, to keep it visible and accessible. Even in these days of sophisticated plastic toys, children can and will take pleasure in a hand-crafted paper windmill or a simple wooden top. The various styles of folk art be it Madhubani, Warli or Patachitra can not be perpetuated in isolation - they need to be viewed as much as possible. Also, involving children in any movement allows for a great degree of success - they are committed, passionate advocates of the cause they believe in. The Say No to Crackers campaign is a valid example of how children can successfully bring about positive change. Similarly, if children see the need to preserve and promote Indian art craft, they will become committed to the cause and contribute to it. Fostering closer ties between school children and traditional practitioners also contributes to the artist/artisans sense of self-worth. In fact, such interactions often serve to validate what the practitioner is doing and adds to self-esteem. Sometimes, during these encounters, one does not anticipate the tremendous response and goodwill generated, a spontaneous occurrence that leaves both the artist and the children spellbound. At a recent interaction between folk singers from Rajasthan and school-children, the entire junior school assembly began to clap and sing in time with the singers, even though they did not know the lyrics fully. That moment in time was beautiful marked by a harmony and empathy, a feeling of universality hard to describe. When the artist sees scores of children interested to how and why he paints something, there is a renewed pride in his legacy and in his ability. When the weaver sees the ease with s/he can weave, what is like second nature to them and what others struggle with, there is a heightened awareness of their skills and the value of it. When children work with traditional practitioners using their materials and techniques, there is a vital flow of knowledge and the children are exposed to new materials and methods. Sometimes, these interactions open up new possibilities of working with familiar materials. The interactions often serve as catalysts, inspiring the children to go on exciting journeys of self-expression, creating in them a desire to explore their artistic abilities. At a recent interaction between school children and Madhubani paper-machie artists, the children were amazed that old paper and clay, when moulded by hand and painted could become such charming animals. The artists were demonstrating how to make turtle candle-holders but soon, the tables were filled with elephants, dolphins, monsters and even Pokemon candle-holders. The children's joy at crafting something with their own hands and the total concentration which most of them lavished on their lumps of paper-machie were simply awe-inspiring. Creating awareness of cultural diversity and enabling better understanding of such multiplicity is another reason why it is critical to ensure that traditional practitioners and school children interact. In these divisive times, it is important that children learn to appreciate the differences and the commonalities between different cultures. It is critical to foster respect for others instead of hatred, to encourage a meaningful search for identity instead of highlighting differences simply to create social barriers. It is important to celebrate the differences and not decry them. When children interact with artists, artisans, folk singers, dancers from all parts of the country, they realize what makes India special and unique. The young mind gains a wider understanding of the world and also of his/her "Indian-ness" too. I could go on with the reasons to promote such interactions including the fact that in this heavily wired (and now unwired!!) world, there needs to be some space for intangible stuff such as beauty and grace. These are fast disappearing from our daily lives as we chase our materialistic goals, and yet are inherent in our art and craft traditions. Let me conclude by saying that may these traditions, the fountainhead of joy, beauty and knowledge continue forever.

Summary of Key Points

Budget allocations to the Handloom and Handicrafts sector have not matched their role in the economy. Despite employing approximately 3% of the total workforce, combined budget allocations to handloom and handicraft sector remains only 0.06% of total budget expenditures. In actual terms, while the total budget expenditure estimate for the year 2010-11 is eleven lakhs eight thousand seven hundred and forty nine crores(INR 11,08,749 crores), the combined budget allocation for handloom and handicraft is six hundred eighty eight crores(688.47 crores).
The overall budget for the textile sector has been consistently increasing over the years but the total budget for handlooms reduced over its previous year allocations in six out of the last fourteen years.
The budgetary allocations to the textile sector grew by over 650 percent, from Rs.739.04 Crores to Rs.5608.08 Crores during 1997-98 to 2009-10. However, the share of handlooms registered an increase of only a little above eighty percent(81.43%) over the same period, from Rs. 203.50 Crores to 369.22 Crores. In average terms this means in the last fourteen years since 1997, while budgetary allocation to the textile sector grew at an annual average rate of more than forty five percent , the annual average increment in handloom budget was less than six percent.
Budget allocations for handicrafts averaged less than 7% of the total textile budget over the last decade, but allocations have increased 463% over the same period..
Non-plan expenditure has been increasing faster than Plan expenditures, suggesting the lack of a long-term policy vision for the handicrafts sector. Part of the reason for this may be the lack of a logical fit of handicrafts within the textiles ministry.
In the aftermath of economic reforms in India, there has been a policy shift in favour of organized sectors of the economy. Consequently, the budget allocations are also tilted in favour of the organized sector.
Given the continued ability of the largely unorganized handloom and handicraft sectors to generate employment, the government’s budget allocations to these sectors need to be proportionate to its actual employment figures and employment potential.Budget AnalysisThe handloom and handicraft sectors continue to be neglected in terms of budgetary allocations. Given that these two sectors directly employ more than ten million people which is approximately 3% of India’s workforce, the allocation to these sectors have not matched their role in the Indian economy. Both for handloom and handicraft , the budgetary expenditure share in the national expenditure budget in the year 2010-11 remained unchanged compared to last year, 0.03 and 0.02 percent respectively. In terms of percentage share of the total textile budget, the combined budget allocations for handloom and handicrafts reduced to less than 13 percent in 2010-11 from 35.16 percent in 1997-98.
Handlooms
As evident in Table 1, the overall budget for the textile sector has been consistently increasing over the years but the total budget for handlooms reduced over its previous year allocations in six out of the last fourteen years. During these years, the share of handloom budget as a percentage of the overall textile budget reduced from 27.5% in 1997-98 to 6.6 % in 2010-11. The budgetary allocations to the textile sector grew by over 650 percent from Rs.739.04 Crores to Rs.5608.08 Crores during 1997-98 to 2009-10. However, the share of handlooms registered an increase of only 81 percent over the same period, from Rs. 203.50 Crores to 369.22Crores.Even this small increase over the years in the handloom budget should not be attributed to any long- term growth plan. The biggest increase in the budgetary allocations from Rs. 152.83 Crores to 255.68 Crores (by 67.2%) was witnessed in the year 2003-04, which was also the year of the general elections in the country. Hence the reasons and the nature of allocations require more elaborate analysis. The general budget is usually announced in the beginning of the fiscal year and the provisions in the general budget are revised towards the end of the fiscal year based on actual expenditures. For handlooms, in most years, the revised budget has reduced the allocations to handlooms, resulting in being an even smaller portion of the total textile budget (see Table 2). In fact, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour (2004-05), in its sixth report, presented to Lok Sabha on 25 April 2005, commented on the under- utlisation of funds allocated for handloom sector and noted that Plan allocations of the Textile Ministry meant for implementation of various schemes remain underutilized year after year. The Committee was also not happy with the trend of Non-Plan expenditure of the Ministry.
Handicrafts
Budget allocations for handicrafts averaged less than 7% of the total textile budget over the last decade, but allocations have increased 463% over the same period (see Table 3), exhibiting better increment compared to handlooms but still far behind the overall increase in the total textile budget increment of over 650%. This increment in budgetary allocations to handicraft sector is perhaps the reflection of the government’s inclination to support export-oriented sectors. This highlights the fact that the government is more keen on promoting exports than protect employment and safeguard livelihoods of millions of skilled people in handloom sector. The export figure of handlooms in the India is less than half of the exports of handicraft sector. However, the non-plan expenditure has been increasing faster than Plan expenditures, suggesting the lack of a long-term policy vision for the handicrafts sector. The plan component of textile budget increased over the last fourteen years by more than eighteen hundred percent and the non-plan share increased by less than one hundred percent. But, the trend is conspicuously the reverse in case of handicraft. Table 3 reveals that over the years while plan allocation has increased by around three hundred and fifty two percent, the increase in the non-plan expenditure is more than eleven hundred percent. Since Plan outlays suggest longer term planning and direction in government investments for sectoral growth, the strategy of raising non-plan allocations suggests an ad-hoc approach toward this sector. Part of the reason for this may be the lack of a logical fit of handicrafts within the textiles ministry. Conclusion In the aftermath of the economic reforms in India, there has been a policy shift in favour of organized sectors of the economy. Consequently, the budget allocations are also tilted in favour of the organized sector. The huge budgetary allocations in the textile budget under the schemes such TUFS and SITP are such examples .Given the continued ability of the largely unorganized handloom and handicraft sectors to generate employment, the government’s budget allocations to these sectors needs to be proportionate to its actual employment figures and employment potential. Despite adverse policy and market conditions, handloom and handicraft sectors continue to be a livelihood option for millions of artisans and weavers. The Government therefore, should ensure a level playing field for this sector and support capacity building efforts toward encouraging competition among the different sub-sectors of textile industry. Notes: This budgetary analysis note is based on the figures taken from the expenditure budget (volume II) of the various annual union Budgets of India. The expenditure provisions included in the various Statements are net of recoveries and receipts. Volume II of the expenditure budget gives details of allocations at disaggregated level within the Ministries. The figure for handloom and handicraft is provided under the ministry of textiles with major heads like Plan /non-plan and revenue/ capital expenditures. Expenditure figures are given for both the general budget and the revised budget.Non-Plan expenditure is a generic term, which is used to cover all expenditure of Government not included in the Plan. It may either be revenue expenditure or capital expenditure. Part of the expenditure is obligatory in nature e.g. interest payments, main subsidies, pensionary charges and statutory transfers to State and Union Territory Governments.

DESIGN & PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORADABAD BRASSWARE INDUSTRY A Proposal by NIFT Accessory Design Department Background In 1997, Prof. Jatin Bhatt of NIFT presented an idea of making available professional design expertise to the ‘Handicraft’ (Brassware) Industry at Moradabad. The central problem being addressed through this initiative was that quality professionals are metro centered. It is extremely difficult to hire design and management professionals in smaller industrial townships such as Moradabad Geared completely towards the export market, there are around 1000 manufacturing units generating Rs.1600 crore per annum (in 1997). Specialized industries with high mechanization are supported by individual skilled workers to fulfill the market demand. The main markets are North America, Europe and Australia with subsidiary markets present in Canada, South Africa, Scandinavia and the Middle East. The idea underlying the project was the inherent value of design in the value chain of a product, essential in the products artistic worth and achieving its maximum net value. The project explored whether design could be applied to the industry to create conditions which would encourage a sustained competitive edge in the market. The project was based on a strong conviction that every form of knowledge is available in India and it is a question of a nodal agency bringing them together.

ALREADY AVAILABLE AT MORADABAD Objects such as candle stands, copperware, planters, vases, trays and baskets, nautical items, bowls, lamps, votives, statues, figures, electro-plated nickel silver ware and mixed medium (for example, glass and wood composites) articles are being created. The predominant materials used are brass, aluminum, iron, glass, copper, zamac, pewter, wood and white metal.The industry employs multiple production processes including: Sand Casting, Sheet Metal Forming, Cut-Work, Stamping, Etching & Engraving, Spinning, Turning, Glass Blowing and Sheet Fabrication. The predominant finishing processes are electroplating, powder coating, lacquering, buffing and polishing and enameling. THE PRESENT DRAWBACKS Because the industry is buyer dictated the central focus is on limiting production costs to give it a competitive advantage in the global markets. There are too many persons competing for too few opportunities. Manufacturing being the core business value, quick turnover and a push to meet demanding deadlines don’t leave much room for experimentation. Design and product development are largely reverse engineered and not much expertise is drawn from professionals.Design is not the owners or exporters central concern. They are heavily dependent on ready-to-source products or designs. Also they lack design interpretation skills and the ability to interpret markets and trends.The industry itself lacks infrastructure and unable to bring the various professionals in the field together. There are insufficient trained persons in the area of product development, quality control, marketing and technology development. There is practically no data-sharing or information available on trends, styles and the consumer market.

WHAT NEEDS ADDRESSING The foremost change needs to enhance the industries knowledge domain to understand trends, styles and markets. The first step is to establish a resource and reference base of styles, aesthetics, forms, international trends, technology, processes, materials, finishes etc. The emerging competition from within and South East Asia will require a new value statement from the industry. The changes will happen primarily through a paradigm shift from a low cost production base towards a design led industry. For any visible impact a minimum of 100 exporters have to undertake serious and consistent new product development working in tandem with atleast 40 designers who have a comprehensive insight in the market requirements and can meet the international quality standards. This will allow and encourage the development of distinct and individual strengths in market positioning creating niche specializations. HOW It is a near impossible task to find all the expertise in Moradabad or to locate them there from all over the country. Prof. Bhatt has developed a fascinating

interactive website which addresses all the issues outlined above along with making available the required information and resources to all persons concerned, creators and buyers. The concept is to create a “Golden Triangle” involving the buyers, manufacturers and designers on a dynamic platform to create new products which are abreast with contemporary consumer aspirations.

The services provided are design development, product innovation, design interpretation, technical and design specification, product prototyping, modeling and sampling, skill upgradation, design and market strategies and finishes development, new materials and technology enhancement, trends information and trade shows and exhibition analysis, a comprehensive database, packaging and presentation aids.

By Design: Sustaining Culture in Local Environments

Issue #004, Winter, 2020 ISSN: 2581- 9410

INTRODUCTION This collection of essays came out of a series of events held in India and the UK(2014-17) that were funded by the British Academy through the International Partnership and Mobility Scheme (award no: PM130270). Its contributors draw on a wide range of professional experience from the craft sector, academia, museums and galleries, the fashion industry, and the development sector. While their occupations are diverse, they are united in their interest in and commitment to design as a factor in sustaining cultural and material heritage. For the majority, their work has focused on the Indian craft sector but other local environments were explored notably the East Midlands in the UK,a region formerly known for its textiles industry where the manufacture of lace, hosiery and knitwear relied on the industrial craft skills of generations of local workers. THE PROJECT was devised by Eiluned Edwards, Professor of Global Cultures of Textiles and Dress, Nottingham Trent University (NTU), UK in collaboration with Ritu Sethi, Chair, Craft Revival Trust, New Delhi,Jatin Bhatt, Professor, School of Design, Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) and Abduljabbar M. Khatri, a9^th generation block printer and dyer, and workshop owner, Dhamadka village, Kachchh district, Gujarat. By Design explored the challenge of sustaining cultural heritage in local environments through the lens of the Indian handicrafts sector and considered the relationship between craft and design. By analysing craft in a range of contexts in India, considering the development strategies and design-led initiatives introduced, the agencies and agents involved, it endavoured to identify different models of practice to discuss with the rising generation of designers, educators, scholars, and activists through a range of events in India and the UK. THE PROGRAMME of EVENTS launched in 2014 with a Research Methods workshop with MA Social Design students at AUD. The following year, a research seminar took place at NTU with staff and postgraduates at NTU. In 2016 at NTU, there was an exhibition of contemporary Indian block prints, IMPRINTS OF CULTURE, at the Bonington Gallery; a three day block printing workshop for staff and students led by Abduljabbar M. Khatri, and an international symposium, CULTURE, HERITAGE AND SUSTAINABILITY with a keynote address by Charllotte Kwon of Maiwa Handprints, Vancouver BC, Canada. A second international symposium,SUSTAINING CULTURAL HERITAGE IN LOCAL ENVIRONMENTS, was hosted at the India International Centre, New Delhi in 2017 with a keynote address by Prableen Sabhaney, Head of Communications and Public Affairs at Fabindia,and an Artisans’ Forum was convened in Jaipur, Rajasthan. At a research partners’ meeting at NTU in March 2017 publication plans and project legacy were discussed. Apart from the public-facing events held in India and the UK in 2016 and 2017, a programme of research was sustained throughout the course of the project (2014-17). The craft sector of Kachchh district, Gujarat, provided a particular focus but research was also carried out in Ahmedabad, Jaipur and New Delhi with designers and design-led companies, including Archana Shah/Bandhej, Chinar Farruqi/Injiri, Rachel Bracken-Singh/Anokhi and Fabindia. Another strand of the research looked at design institutes and cultural organisations such as museums and included interactions with the School of Design, AUD and the Indian Institute of Craft and Design, Jaipur in the former category and in the latter, the Shrujan Life and Learning Design Centre (LLDC) at Ajrakhpur, Kachchh, the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing, Amber, Rajasthan, the National Museum, New Delhi and in the UK, the Victoria and Albert Museum, New Walk Gallery, Leicester, and the John Smedley archive at Lea Mills, Derbyshire. THE CONTEXT The research underpinning the project was carried out in December 2014, when By Design partners met in Kachchh district, Gujarat. It considered who the stake holders were in the district’s craft sector and explored the ways in which they tackled the issue of cultural sustainability, considering a range of concerns from the environment to market access. Research with craftspeople was conducted at two sites: Zura-Nirona with metal workers (bell casting); at the block printing and dyeing cluster[i] of Dhamadka-Ajrakhpur. Kachchh was chosen for several reasons: in recognition of its importance as a site of craft production – today but also dating back to the late Harappan period of Indus Valley Civilisation (c.2600-1800 BCE); its expansive NGO sector;it made the most of the existing connections between the district’s artisans and NGOs, andEiluned Edwards (who has worked in Kachchh since the early 1990s) and Jatin Bhatt (who had been a consultant on several craft development projects in Kachchh). During a ten-day period, interviews were carried out with members of the Lohar, metal-workers’ community at Zura-Nirona, and with Khatri block printers at Ajrakhpur-Dhamadka. Abeer Gupta (formerly AUD), working in collaboration with block printer, Abduljabbar M. Khatri, shot footage capturing the process of ajrakh printing with natural dyes for which the Khatri community is internationally renowned. (The resulting films were first shown at the IMPRINTS of CULTURE exhibition at NTU in 2016). Discussions were also held with colleagues at Khamir, a local NGO, that ‘works to strengthen and promote the rich artisanal traditions of Kachchh district’[ii]. Khamirhas carried out documentation of the region’s crafts, offers design input, language and business training to artisans, and hosts regular exhibitions to promote crafts and boost their sales.The research partners also visited the Shrujan Trust at Bhujodi, which was founded in 1968-69 by the late Chandaben Shroff, and was the first NGO in India to create employment for women through commercial hand embroidery. Inspired by objects embroidered for dowry, the Shrujan team produces fashion, accessories and soft furnishings and the women, who represent twelve local communities and come from one hundred and twenty villages, pride themselves on the quality of the goods they produce. In the district capital, Bhuj, visits were made to the Kachchh Museum which had been founded in 1877 as part of the Bhuj School of Art by Khengarji III, the Maharao of Kachchch (r.1876-1942), and the Aina Mahal Palace, Bhuj, which was built in about 1750 at the behest of Maharao Lakhpatji (r.1741-60) under the guidance of Ramsingh Malam, a remarkable craftsman from Kathiawar (now Saurashstra).Ramsingh Malam’s contribution to craft development in the district warrants consideration. After spending eighteen years in Europe where he learned tile work, glassblowing, enamelling, clock-making, gun-casting, foundry-work and stone carving, he landed in Kachchh and with royal patronage brought his skills to bear on the Aina Mahal. He trained apprentices in the district where he also established a glass factory, a tile factory and iron foundry, and returned twice to Europe for further instruction, taking students with him each time.[iii] Working in an area so steeped in craft provided numerous and varied examples of practice, allowing the group to explore how local heritage was managed by different actors and agencies, including the state (Gujarat and India) through the examples of the Kachchh Museum, the annual Rann Utsav craft mela (fair), and the Gujarat State Handicrafts and Handlooms Development Corporation. Private initiatives such as the Aina Mahal Trustwere explored as well as interventions by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) including Khamir, Shrujan Trust and Qasab all of which work in the craft sector. In tandem with state and other agencies, local heritage was explored through the experiences of craftspeople themselves whose skills and entrepreneurship have sustained practices and traditions through generations. In this respect the participation of Abduljabbar M. Khatri throughout the lifespan of the project was especially valuable, in addition to which his longstanding experience of working with designers allied to his own design work brought unique insights to the project. DEFINING HERITAGE There is ongoing debate about how to define ‘heritage’ and alternatives to the term such as ‘cultural resources’[iv] and ‘cultural property’ have been suggested; the latter is problematic because it implies ownership with the attendant association with private ownership and exclusive access to resources[v]. However, a slightly revised term, ‘traditional cultural property’, has gained currency in heritage management practice, where indigenous communities have been contributing to dialogue about heritage because of ‘their status as owners of land and tradition, and their being part of cultural heritage’[vi]. Drawing on Romila Thapar’s work on Indian cultures in which she addresses the different types of heritage, she defines two kinds: ‘One is the natural heritage that came from the physical creation of the earth. This is the heritage we are currently busy depleting because we cannot control our greed for the wealth that comes from destroying natural resources. By linking the environment to history, this heritage is now being seen as essential to the other one. The other heritage is the one the one that was cultivated and created by human effort. This became what we call ‘cultural heritage’. It includes objects and ideas that determine our pattern of life.’[vii] Craft dwells at the interface of these two types of heritage. For the craftspeople involved in this project, their cultural property, or ‘intangible cultural heritage’ resides in inherited skills and knowledge, transmitted from one generation to the next through informal or embodied learning. The term they most commonly use to describe this is parampara (Hindi: परंपरा ), which translates as ‘tradition’. But many of them are confronted by an existential threat to their livelihoods borne of environmental degradation and water shortages, in addition to which there are commercial assaults on their cultural property as the reproduction of craft goods by cheaper, faster means is rife. The rootedness of traditions and skills in a specific region, reflected in local pride[viii]is embedded in legislation to protect the traditional products of India, including crafts. The Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, first introduced by the Government of India in 1999, was revised and came into force in 2003. Widely known as the ‘G.I. Act’, it is one of six Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) instigated by the World Trade Organisation of which India is a signatory.[ix]Under the conditions of the G.I. Act (2003), however, a craft must be formally registered and individuals are precluded from applying;applications are only accepted from an association of craftspeople working in a specific area. Applying groups are required to provide historical, anthropological and statistical evidence of their craft in a given location, and the form must be completed in English. As many craftspeople read and write only the vernacular and Hindi, the form is usually prepared in collaboration with local NGOs where there is often an English speaker on staff. The G.I Act 2003 creates a cultural geography of ‘place goods’[x] and is aspirational in its intent of securing their distinctiveness from the threat of illegal reproduction. As Jaya Jaitly, activist and the founder of the NGO,Dastkari Haat Samiti, has commented, ‘With the registration of geographical indications, craftsmen will now have some protection. No-one will be able to sell their products under the same name. G.I. is necessary to keep our cultural heritage intact in the global market’.[xi]It must be noted that since the introduction of the Act, however, no legal action has been pursued by any registered craft association with G.I. status despite numerous instances of trespass on the intellectual property rights of artisans. In the field of textile printing, for example, copying is common, and the reproduction of heritage block prints by means of screen or digital printing, which is a widespread problem for block printers, goes unchallenged.[xii] SUSTAINING HERITAGE It is interesting to note that the focus of the G.I. Act is to protect trade as a pre-requisite for cultural heritage to flourish. The UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage recognizes traditional craftsmanship as one five broad domains in which intangible cultural heritage is manifested does not explicitly link safeguarding culture to commerce in the same way. Rather it states that, ‘Any efforts to safeguard traditional craftsmanship must focus not on preserving craft objects - no matter how beautiful, precious, rare or important they might be – but on creating the conditions that will encourage artisans to continue to produce crafts of all kinds, and to transmit their skills and knowledge to others’.[xiii] But perhaps a vibrant commercial environment is implied under the Convention as one of a number of conditions required to sustain cultural heritage. Environmental issues are of urgent concern throughout India and impact cultural heritage in numerous ways. In Kachchh, for example, there is a well-established three-year cycle of drought and all residents are accustomed to recurring water shortages.[xiv]For craftspeople such as the Khatris, however, whose businesses rely on a continuous supply of running water, this can be disastrous. Adopting a practice introduced by local farmers in the 1960s, many workshop owners have resorted to sinking a tube well that draws on the natural aquifer.[xv] While solving the immediate problem, longer term this leads to lowering of the water table, saline ingress and increased desertification: a serious threat to natural heritage. As an understanding of the environmental impact of tube wells has grown among the Khatris, the community at Ajrakhpur (part of the Dhamadka-Ajrakhpur block printing cluster)[xvi] has been looking for alternatives; they decided to set up a central effluent treatment plant (CETP) in the village – a design for the future. Liaising with Khamir, the local agency working with the Government of India’s Sustainable Textiles for Sustainable Development (SUSTEX) project, they have trialed a scheme that they hope will be fully implemented in the future. The CETP will collect waste water from all the workshops in the village, filter it and recycle it five times before eventually releasing it for agricultural use. As stake holders in the future, the Khatris continue to seek viable solutions to the challenges confronting their heritage. THE ESSAYS included in this collection explore how cultural heritage is managed and sustained in a range of contexts primarily in India although some draw our attention to practices in other parts of the world. They investigate business and educational initiatives for sustaining craft and cultural heritage; several address the commercial environment required, and others shed light on the approach taken by cultural institutions such as museums through exhibitions, permanent displays and outreach programmes. We hear about the lived experience of craftspeople and designers as well as scholars and educators and those in the museum world. Each author offers a different perspective but what emerges from their contributions is how essential collaboration is in all the activities described – between individuals,institutions and nations, across borders and time. The collection opens with an account of the lived experience of two block printers working in rural Gujarat. It is a joint contribution from Abduljabbar M. Khatri (“Jabbar”) and his son, Adam, who are the ninth and tenth generation of a family of ajrakh [xvii] printers from Dhamadka village in Kachchh district.They discuss the evolution of ajrakh printing in Kachchh with which their family has been intimately involved, recalling how it has transitioned in the recent past from a staple of local dress, widely worn by male herdersin Banni, north Kachchh, to a fashionable fabric used for garments and soft furnishings. Jabbar’s father, Mohammad Siddik, was one of the last generation of printers to supply ajrakh to a local market before his customers adopted cheaper polyester fabrics in the 1970s. At the time Mohammad Siddik made two significant choices: the first, to revive the use of natural dyes, knowledge he believed to be the Khatris’ heritage and which he felt was at risk of dying out; the second was to take a step into the unknown by collaborating with young designers from the National Institute of Design (NID) on the adaptation of ajrakh and other traditional prints for soft furnishings. These new products would be sold in Gurjari, the retail outlet of the newly-founded Gujarat State Handicrafts and Hand looms Development Corporation, in Ahmedabad. Jabbar and Adam’s narrative skewers the point at which family and caste history intersects with postcolonial craft development policy as it was delivered in Gujarat, placing Mohammad Siddik at the vanguard of artisan-designer collaborations – which are now commonplace. This juncture also marks the start of the family’s now forty year working relationship with Archana Shah who recounts her own early experiences in Kachchh in her contribution to this collection. Archana’s essay evokes the early days of both NID and craft development in Gujarat. It navigates the transition of craft objects such as ajrakh prints from use as rural caste dress to chic furnishings and fashion in a contemporary, urban context, initially in India but latterly around the world. As a member of one of the early cohorts of professional designers to emerge from NID, she captures how the design-craft development nexus started to take shape. The exchange of knowledge and skills between design and craft professionals in those early days relied on trust as much as a financial incentive; nonetheless, revitalising the commercial potential of traditional craft underpinned these collaborations. Her encounter with rural crafts influenced her future career as a design entrepreneur and laid the foundations of her company, Bandhej (Hindi for ‘tie dye’). Her essay also sheds light onNID as an incubator of design talent which placed an emphasis on the Bauhaus credo of ‘learning by doing’[xviii] and the unique character of the institution’s curriculum. Although influenced by international modernism – the India Report [xix] prepared by American designers, Charles and Ray Eames, defined its underlying spirit – NID asserted the social role of design in uplifting communities and marginalised groups and its staff and students have been part of many initiatives.At the vanguard of design in postcolonial India, Archana has not only contributed to establishing the profession of ‘designer’ but has also established a template for ‘corporate social responsibility’ in the ethos of her company, working consistently to uplift those marginalised by geography, social status, or gender through engagement in craft. After describing the successful uptake of artisanal textiles by high end fashion, Archana concludes by identifying the need for sales to expand into less elite sectors in order to secure the livelihoods of ‘around thirty million textile artisans.’ Her advocacy of the local use of locally produced textiles echoes Mahatma Gandhi’s promotion of indigenous cloth as a means of securing the self-sufficiency of India’s villages. He envisioned independent India with a craft-based economic structure and his leadership of the swadeshi (‘of the country’) campaign in the early twentieth century saw simple khadi (handloom fabric made from hand spun yarn) become the ‘fabric of independence.’[xx] The significance of handlooms is discussed later in the collection by Ruth Clifford. Following on from Archana’s overview of craft and its uptake in Indian fashion, Sandy Black locates craft in the global fashion system. She draws attention to the fact that although much of the industry is highly automated and mass-produced, it still relies on individual skilled workers operating manually controlled machinery. Artisanal production of embroidery, handlooms and accessories remains significant in the global south - especially for women’s employment.Highlighting the domination by a few conglomerates of luxury and designer sectors, Sandy identifies growing consumer concern about the nature and sustainability of fashion. In an industry where complex supply chains remain largely invisible there is ample evidence of environmental and ethical abuse. With public calls for transparency and accountability, there has been a reappraisal of craft and the ethics of production among a rising number of businesses. Identifying the contradictions inherent in the industry, Sandy points to the plurality of fashion which crosses cultures, geographies and time and to the semiotics of dress which expresses social identities, inclusion and exclusion, and the passage of time. As a medium that encompasses the high street, catwalk and gallery, fashion is celebrated in the academic record, and is one of the most important global industries as well. Returning to our focus on South Asia, Sandy goes on to note the importance of garment manufacture which accounts for a good deal of the gross domestic product and export earnings for several countries in the region.This is acknowledged in Archana’s contribution and on a more personal level by Jabbar and Adam whose essay identifies the role fashion has played in securing a future for the craft of block printing in Kachchh. A bleak picture emerges, however, as Sandy digs into the detailof ‘fast fashion’. The acceleration of the globalization of manufacture, with production and consumption reaching unsustainable levels (especially in the global north) is the result of trading agreements abandoned in the interest of free trade. Media coverage of the Rana Plaza disaster of 2013 which came to epitomise the environmental and human costs of ‘fast fashion’, took damning evidence of the loss of life into peoples’ homes around the world.The disaster came to mark a turning point in the industry, setting into action an agenda for change. (Divia Patel’s essay which follows, discusses the V&A’s response to the disaster). Against this sombre backdrop and acknowledging the scale of action required and its complexity, Sandy gives an overview of the campaigns, companies, designers, educational institutions and multi-stake holder and government initiatives in different regions working towards radical change. Based at London College of Fashion (LCF), a pioneer in fashion sustainability, she delineates both her own contribution to developing new narratives for sustainable fashion and research projects undertaken by PhD students at LCF. Sandy’s work, including publications such as The Sustainable Fashion Handbook,[xxi]maps the trajectory of sustainable fashion from the 1980s to the present. It outlines key themes and lists the designers and companies at the vanguard of change and addresses the role of craft and the place and value of the handmade in contemporary fashion. Her contribution to this collection provides an overview that illuminates the ways in which initiatives in the fashion industry led by individuals, companies and NGOs, are starting to re-shape consumption and to foreground sustainability. Alternatives to fast fashion are on offer that encourage reduced consumption but with enhanced value of goods. These innovations allied to new research on heritage crafts represent a paradigm shift to ‘more mindful consumption practices and ultimately towards a sustainable fashion industry.’ There follows a pair of essays written from the curator’s perspective. The first by Divia Patel, Senior Curator in the Asia department at the V&A, focuses on the V&A’s block buster exhibition of 2015-16, The Fabric of India, and discusses contemporary craft practices as well as the role of the museum. It is followed by an essay from Anamika Pathak, Curator of Decorative Arts and Textiles at the National Museum, New Delhi, in which she explores the contribution of her department to sustaining cultural heritage in India. Between them, these essays illustrate different aspects of a curator’s work in a leading national museum and in the process reveal the ways in which museums not only tackle the challenge of sustaining cultural heritage but also engage the public in the ongoing debate. In her discussion of The Fabric of India, Divia explains why a thematic-chronological format was chosen for the exhibition. It enabled the curators to tell the story of Indian handmade textiles by placing them at the heart of India’s culture and economy and allowed exploration of their far-reaching global impact. The curators were concerned to fully acknowledge and celebrate the skill and ingenuity of generations of artisans and to demonstrate the continuity of crafts practice. They married objects, images and short films of textile processes shot in workshops across India in order to do so.A selection of contemporary Indian fashion, at the intersection of craft and design, made evident the relevance of craft today. By illuminating the development of a major exhibition, outlining the curators’ aims and how they were fulfilled in the objects, images and films commissioned and displayed, Divia’s contribution demonstrates how the V&A is building a legacy with specific reference to Indian crafts. From Anamika, we learn more of the day-to-day activities undertaken by the Decorative Arts department at the National Museum, from conservation of objects to organizing temporary and touring exhibitions and undertaking a varied educational programme that notably includes craft workshops, lectures and seminars.In common with the V&A, the National Museum sees itself as a guardian of material and cultural heritage, and its commitment to communicating the importance of sustaining traditional crafts for future generations is enacted through its exhibition, outreach and education programmes. Apart from their guardianship of material heritage, objects of local, national and global significance, museums play a key role in education and research. The displays and exhibitions they mount form public opinion and raise awareness (note Divia’s description of the V&A’s response to Rana Plaza), inspire visitors, influence taste and markets, encourage trade and provoke debate. Synthesising aesthetics, the transmission of knowledge and expertise, and economics, both the V&A and the National Museum, New Delhi offer a public education programme that includes lectures, conferences, and specialised courses. Education,as we have seen in the earlier essays by Sandy Black and Archana Shah, applied in different ways to sustaining heritage, is crucial. The next essay returns us to artisanal practice in India and considers education for hereditary artisans and explore show the needs of handloom weavers are served. Ruth Clifford, a PhD student at Nottingham Trent University, focuses on case studies of two initiatives in India that have introduced design and business education for artisans: Somaiya Kala Vidya (SKV) in Kachchh district, Gujarat, and The Handloom School (THS) in Maheshwar, Madhya Pradesh. Her essay analyses the experiences of handloom weavers at each institution and opens with an outline of the significance of the handloom industry in India. She proposes that the development of the industry has been dogged by the prevailing view of handloom as a symbol of tradition and weavers as being at odds with modern technologies. Furthermore, she points to the division between fine art and industrial or decorative art established during the colonial period and perpetuated, she feels, by the NID, which has resulted in the divide between artisan and designer. It reduces artisans to mere labourers and de-values any traditional or embodied knowledge they possess. The two projects at the heart of her research seek to address these limitations and assert the value of hereditary, artisanal knowledge. They acknowledge, nonetheless, that artisans’ lack of access to formal education (at secondary and tertiary level and especially English medium), limits their access to other types of knowledge, essential for their businesses to flourish. By re-valuing traditional knowledge, developing a curriculum that is shaped by the specific needs of artisans and offers a flexible timetable that allows them to sustain their workshops and family businesses, these projects challenge the perception of both artisans and the nature of design education. Drawing on interviews and contextual research among handloom weavers studying at SKV and THS, as well as graduates, Ruth’s research reveals how the aims and objectives of each institution are being realised and reviewed and impact the students long-term. Although each institution has a different policy for selecting students and has its own, unique curriculum, her analysis reveals certain common benefits emerging among the graduates. Apart from a new understanding of design which has enhanced established skills and commercial contacts, attending SKV and THS has brought an appreciation of the value of handlooms as well as economic benefits to its graduates and their families. But beyond that, graduating artisans enjoy enhanced ‘cultural capital’ and social mobility and, crucially for women, these ‘gains’ are not confined to men. SKV and THS are helping to change the perception of artisans, to establish their agency as artisan-designers and entrepreneurs, and markets are responding accordingly. As Ruth concludes, the future sustainability of handloom weaving rests on this evolution. In the final essay, Ritu Sethi, Chair of the Craft Revival Trust, concludes with a cautionary note. Drawing together many of the threads of discussion explored in the collection (and the project as a whole), her contribution focuses on the threats to craft as craftspeople negotiate the modern world. With a purview of craft activity not only in India but in the broader region of South Asia borne of compiling the AsiaINCH encyclopedia as well as serving as an adviser on intangible cultural heritage to the Government of India, Ritu outlines areas of pressing concern. She addresses four linked issues: digital technologies; copying and fakes; regulations and compliance; formal education v. received knowledge. She observes that in a relatively short space of time, the internet has transformed the lives of craftspeople, bringing benefits in terms of access to clients, markets and each other, accelerating business and the transmission of ideas. But she alerts us to the misuse of digital technologies – their facility for reproducing and transferring patterns and objects with great accuracy and speed poses an existential threat to craft. Copying craft goods whether it be a handloom, an embroidery, or cire perdu metal figures, is widespread, cheap to do and serves a ready market. At present, as a business model the trespass is seemingly unstoppable. While it might be imagined that the law would protect the rights of craftspeople, the legislation – the Geographical Indications Act which was introduced in 2003 (discussed earlier in this Introduction) - has never been enacted despite numerous transgressions. Although 343 craft associations are G.I. registered, craftspeople’s intellectual property rights continue to be ignored yetthey fail to take collective action. Ritu also points to the under-utilisation of G.I. as a branding tool and the G.I. associations failure to act in either respect represents as she neatly states, ‘opportunities lost, rather than competitive advantages gained.’ This laissez faire approach does little to promote the viability of craft production long term. While applauding the success of leading craftspeople, Ritu spotlights an issue that has been largely ignored so far: the responsibilities of workshop owners towards their employees and the environment. Craft is commonly described as being an ‘unorganized’ or ‘informal’ sector, and many craft businesses are typically small, family-run concerns, employing few, if any workers from outside the family. The regulation of wages and working conditions has received little scrutiny, likewise the environmental impact of craft. Ritu draws attention to some of the legislation that craftspeople-entrepreneurs need to adhere to, and predicts that, ultimately, failure to comply could jeopardise crucial overseas sales. In this respect, the work of the All India Artisans’ and Craft workers’ Welfare Association (AIACA) to establish employment and environmental norms among craftspeople is worth noting.[xxii]However, the scale and diversity of the sector makes it a considerable challenge; although the numbers are uncertain, ‘it is estimated that [there are] about twenty million craftspeople and weavers,’ as Ritu notes. The last issue she addresses is that of education and knowledge. Echoing points made by Ruth Clifford, Ritu reviews the impact of new educational opportunities for craftspeople. In the hierarchical landscape of formal education,‘received’ or ‘embodied’ knowledge has been under-valued. Thus, hereditary knowledge gained through practice in the workshop has customarily received less credit than text-based learning. Referring to SKV, THS and Kala Raksha Vidyalaya (KRV) in Sumrasar village, Kachchh, she illustrates the ways in which these projects are challenging the old order, replacing it with a more inclusive type of education tailored for the needs of craftspeople. Making a case for parity between different types of learning and knowledge, she cites the examples of Japan, France, Sweden, Korea and China, all countries that have invested in craft training and education. While Ritu’s essay endorses the efforts made by the Government of India, NGOs, and others, to sustain craft and textile traditions, her closing plea is for vigilance – that India does not let its unique cultural heritage slip away. Conclusion The essays in this collection provide insights into a diverse range of initiatives that address the issue of sustainability of cultural heritage. The focus of the collection (and the project overall) on Indian crafts has shown that there is a good deal to celebrate but little room for complacency. While the contributors share their experiences, expertise and enthusiasm, they are realistic in their appraisal of the craft sector, and they make the problems it faces transparent. Artisan-entrepreneurs, Abduljabbar and Adam Khatri, capture the revival of block printing in Kachchh but reveal the perils facing the craft that include environmental issues, notably water shortages, and the plague of copying heritage prints. Designer, Archana Shah, provides another facet of the same story, capturing the early days of NID, craft development and the craft-fashion nexus. The role of fashion, introduced by Archana, is expanded on by Sandy Black, whose essay places craft in the global fashion system. An expert on sustainable fashion, Sandy writes of the consequences of ‘fast fashion’ and suggests that heritage crafts could be part of a shift to more thoughtful consumption as the fashion industry is forced to mend its ways in the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster. In a discussion of the V&A’s The Fabric of India exhibition (2015-16), Divia Patel’s essay consolidates the importance of fashion in post-colonial craft revival. She mentions, however, some of the pitfalls of artisan-designer collaborations – chiefly the relegation of the artisan to a mere labourer – and alludes to the sometimes uncomfortable meeting of new technologies and heritage designs. (An issue of particular concernto Jabbar and Adam Khatri and their fellow block printers). Contemplating the legacy of the exhibition, she includes a statement of the V&A’s commitment to collecting key examples of contemporary textiles and dress from South Asia. Diverting slightly from the focus on craft, the V&A has been active more broadly in sustaining culture, not only through its collecting policy but also through the Culture in Crisis programme which was launched in 2015.[xxiii]The guardianship role of a museum is identified by Anamika Pathak who reveals the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the National Museum’s work. She outlines how the cycle of the museum’s activities aims to instil an understanding of Indian cultures through its exhibition and education programmes, promoting the importance of sustaining heritage. Education is also identified as a key factor in sustaining heritage crafts in Ruth Clifford’s analysis of two recent initiatives to provide a design and business curriculum for artisans. She points to the personal, economic and social benefits accrued by graduates of SKV and THS; their improved status is reflected in the rising arc of their aspirations and opportunities. This factor is picked up by Ritu Sethi in the concluding essay. While applauding the success of the many craft development schemes introduced since Indian independence in 1947, her tone is cautionary;although much has been achieved, environmental, social and commercial factors all conspire to threaten heritage crafts. (Bearing this in mind, it is interesting to note that ‘culture’ is not expressly mentioned in the UNESCO Millennium Development Goals,or in the more recent Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs). These essays have addressed the threats to a specific aspect of Indian cultural heritage and have illustrated in detail initiatives to secure its rich variety and longevity. Our hope is that this collection (and the project overall) has engendered an understanding of the greater context, that it is the heritage of humanity under threat– surely a cause of global concern. To conclude with a statement that is buried in the detail of the 17 SDGs: ‘No development can be sustainable without including culture.’[xxiv] Acknowledgements Heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed to this project; it has been instructive, enriching and enjoyable. We are grateful to those who participated in the field research as well as in the events held in Nottingham, New Delhi and Jaipur; particular thanks to those who have generously contributed essays to this collection. By publishing the collection in AsiaINCH, our intention is to make the discussions that took place (and informed the essays) accessible to as wide an audience as possible, leaving a legacy beyond the end of the project. We would like to close with a note of thanks to the British Academy which funded the project for 3 years (Award # PM130270, 2014-17), and to the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University and the Craft Revival Trust, New Delhi, which provided venues and valuable support for the events. EE 20.8.19 [i] In India, ‘cluster theory’ has been widely embraced in the craft development sector, and specialist craft communities, originally shaped by caste affiliation, are now described as clusters. Devised by economist, Alfred Marshall, cluster theory proposes that the creation of specialised industrial areas facilitates economic growth and efficiency. See: Principles of Economics. London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan (2013) [1890]. [ii] Khamir was founded in 2005 as a joint initiative of Kachchh Nav Nirman Abhiyan and the Nehru Foundation for Development and was formally registered under the Societies and Trust Acts in the same year. Today, it serves as a platform for the promotion of traditional handicrafts and allied cultural practices, the processes involved in their creation, and the preservation of culture, community and local environments. See: http://www.khamir.org/about/khamir/who (website accessed 8.10.18). [iii] Goswamy, B.N. and A.Dallapiccola (1983), A Place Apart: Painting in Kutch, 1720-1820.Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras: Oxford University Press, pp.3-4. [iv]Lipe, W. ‘Value and meaning in cultural resources’ in: Cleere, H. (ed)(1984), Approaches to Archaeological Heritage, 1-11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [v] Carman, J. (2002), Archaeology and Heritage: An Introduction. London and New York: Continuum. [vi] Schofield, J. ‘Heritage management, theory and practice’ in: Fairclough, G., Rodney Harrison et al (eds)(2008), The Heritage Reader. London and New York: Routledge, p.16. [vii] Thapar, R. (2018), Indian Cultures as Heritage. New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, p.2. [viii]Khamir, one of the NGOs we interviewed in Kachchh in December 2014, takes its name from the Kachchhiterm meaning ‘intrinsic pride’. See: http://www.khamir.org/about/khamir/who (website accessed 4.6.19). [ix]According to the G.I. Act (2003), ‘Geographical Indications of Goods are defined as that aspect of industrial property which refer to the geographical indication referring to a country or to a place situated therein as being the country of origin of that product. Typically, such a name conveys an assurance of quality and distinctiveness which is essentially attributable to the fact of its origin in that defined geographical locality, region or country’. (www.ipindia.nic.in. Website accessed 4.6.19) [x]Kapur, A. (2016)[2019], Made Only in India. Goods with Geographical Indications. New Delhi, London, New York: Routledge, p.xiii. [xi] Jaya Jaitly quoted by: Thomson, L.M. and S.D. Sharma, ‘Crafted to take on the world’, The Economic Times, 20.7.08. [xii]The problem is not simply that heritage block prints such as ajrakh are reproduced as screen or digital prints but that the copies are marketed and sold as authentic block prints. These ersatz heritage prints are far cheaper to produce which undermines fair pricing when it comes to the market for block prints, ultimately eroding threatening the survival of the craft. [xiii] For details of the UNESCO 2003 Convention see: https://ich.unesco.org/en/intangible-heritage-domains (website accessed 24.10.18). [xiv] Mehta, L. (1996), Kutch, the Sardar Sarovar Project and the Socio-Economic Component in Water Resources Management. London: Overseas Development Institute. [xv] The so-called ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s saw vast tracts of Indian forest and waste land turned over to the plough, supported by the introduction of artificial irrigation schemes. The industrialisation of agriculture would enable India to become self-sufficient in food grains, ultimately freeing it from reliance on food aid from other countries and asserting its independent nationhood. [xvi]Cluster theory has been a formative influence in the Indian craft development sector. It was devised by economist, Alfred Marshall, who proposed that the creation of specialised industrial areas would facilitate economic growth and efficiency. See: Principles of Economics. London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan (2013) [1890]. [xvii] Ajrakh is a complex resist- and mordant-dyed textile (traditionally cotton) that is printed on both sides of the cloth and adheres to Islamic principles of non-figurative design.Predominantly red (madder or alizarin) and blue (indigo) in colour, it features a centre panel surrounded by several borders that combine geometric and floral patterns. [xviii] Rane, M. (2017), The Design Journey of Prof. Sudhakar Nadkarni. Mumbai: Mandar Rane, p.37. [xix] Eames, Charles and Ray (2004)[1958], The India Report. Ahmedabad: National Institute of Design. [xx] Bean, Susan S. (1989), ‘Gandhi and Khadi, the Fabric of Indian Independence’, in: Weiner, A. B. and Jane Schneider (eds), Cloth and Human Experience, Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 355-376. [xxi] Black, Sandy (2012), The Sustainable Fashion Handbook. London and New York: Thames and Hudson. [xxii] For further information on the All India All India Artisans’ and Craftworkers’ Welfare Association (AIACA), see: aiacaonline.org. [xxiii]The participants of the Culture in Crisis Conference held on the 14 April 2015 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in collaboration with the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage at Yale University and under the patronage of UNESCO, produced the ‘London Declaration on Culture in Crisis’. In 2018, the Pretoria Declaration on Culture in Crisis was produced by Culture in Crisis International Team (comprised of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Yale’s Global Cultural Heritage Initiatives and the Museum fur Naturkunde, Berlin, and the University of Pretoria). Access via:http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/v/the-v-and-as-culture-in-crisis-programme/ [xxiv] UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals (2015). See: https://en.unesco.org/sdgs(accessed 20.8.19). Footnotes [1] In India, ‘cluster theory’ has been widely embraced in the craft development sector, and specialist craft communities, originally shaped by caste affiliation, are now described as clusters. Devised by economist, Alfred Marshall, cluster theory proposes that the creation of specialised industrial areas facilitates economic growth and efficiency. See: Principles of Economics. London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan (2013) [1890]. [1] Khamir was founded in 2005 as a joint initiative of Kachchh Nav Nirman Abhiyan and the Nehru Foundation for Development and was formally registered under the Societies and Trust Acts in the same year. Today, it serves as a platform for the promotion of traditional handicrafts and allied cultural practices, the processes involved in their creation, and the preservation of culture, community and local environments. See: http://www.khamir.org/about/khamir/who (website accessed 8.10.18). [1] Goswamy, B.N. and A.Dallapiccola (1983), A Place Apart: Painting in Kutch, 1720-1820.Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras: Oxford University Press, pp.3-4. [1]Lipe, W. ‘Value and meaning in cultural resources’ in: Cleere, H. (ed)(1984), Approaches to Archaeological Heritage, 1-11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [1] Carman, J. (2002), Archaeology and Heritage: An Introduction. London and New York: Continuum. [1] Schofield, J. ‘Heritage management, theory and practice’ in: Fairclough, G., Rodney Harrison et al (eds)(2008), The Heritage Reader. London and New York: Routledge, p.16. [1] Thapar, R. (2018), Indian Cultures as Heritage. New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, p.2. [1]Khamir, one of the NGOs we interviewed in Kachchh in December 2014, takes its name from the Kachchhiterm meaning ‘intrinsic pride’. See: http://www.khamir.org/about/khamir/who (website accessed 4.6.19). [1]According to the G.I. Act (2003), ‘Geographical Indications of Goods are defined as that aspect of industrial property which refer to the geographical indication referring to a country or to a place situated therein as being the country of origin of that product. Typically, such a name conveys an assurance of quality and distinctiveness which is essentially attributable to the fact of its origin in that defined geographical locality, region or country’. (www.ipindia.nic.in. Website accessed 4.6.19) [1]Kapur, A. (2016)[2019], Made Only in India. Goods with Geographical Indications. New Delhi, London, New York: Routledge, p.xiii. [1] Jaya Jaitly quoted by: Thomson, L.M. and S.D. Sharma, ‘Crafted to take on the world’, The Economic Times, 20.7.08. [1]The problem is not simply that heritage block prints such as ajrakh are reproduced as screen or digital prints but that the copies are marketed and sold as authentic block prints. These ersatz heritage prints are far cheaper to produce which undermines fair pricing when it comes to the market for block prints, ultimately eroding threatening the survival of the craft. [1] For details of the UNESCO 2003 Convention see: https://ich.unesco.org/en/intangible-heritage-domains (website accessed 24.10.18). [1] Mehta, L. (1996), Kutch, the Sardar Sarovar Project and the Socio-Economic Component in Water Resources Management. London: Overseas Development Institute. [1] The so-called ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s saw vast tracts of Indian forest and waste land turned over to the plough, supported by the introduction of artificial irrigation schemes. The industrialisation of agriculture would enable India to become self-sufficient in food grains, ultimately freeing it from reliance on food aid from other countries and asserting its independent nationhood. [1]Cluster theory has been a formative influence in the Indian craft development sector. It was devised by economist, Alfred Marshall, who proposed that the creation of specialised industrial areas would facilitate economic growth and efficiency. See: Principles of Economics. London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan (2013) [1890]. [1]Ajrakh is a complex resist- and mordant-dyed textile (traditionally cotton) that is printed on both sides of the cloth and adheres to Islamic principles of non-figurative design.Predominantly red (madder or alizarin) and blue (indigo) in colour, it features a centre panel surrounded by several borders that combine geometric and floral patterns. [1] Rane, M. (2017), The Design Journey of Prof. Sudhakar Nadkarni. Mumbai: Mandar Rane, p.37. [1] Eames, Charles and Ray (2004)[1958], The India Report. Ahmedabad: National Institute of Design. [1] Bean, Susan S. (1989), ‘Gandhi and Khadi, the Fabric of Indian Independence’, in: Weiner, A. B. and Jane Schneider (eds), Cloth and Human Experience, Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 355-376. [1] Black, Sandy (2012), The Sustainable Fashion Handbook. London and New York: Thames and Hudson. [1] For further information on the All India All India Artisans’ and Craftworkers’ Welfare Association (AIACA), see: aiacaonline.org. [1]The participants of the Culture in Crisis Conference held on the 14 April 2015 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in collaboration with the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage at Yale University and under the patronage of UNESCO, produced the ‘London Declaration on Culture in Crisis’. In 2018, the Pretoria Declaration on Culture in Crisis was produced by Culture in Crisis International Team (comprised of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Yale’s Global Cultural Heritage Initiatives and the Museum fur Naturkunde, Berlin, and the University of Pretoria). Access via:http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/v/the-v-and-as-culture-in-crisis-programme/ [1] UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals (2015). See: https://en.unesco.org/sdgs(accessed 20.8.19).

They had never seen white soldiers before. Once they had passed by on horseback. That’s all they knew of the Raja of Jaipur, to whom the village as gifted. They neverBritish Raj.They knew very well the Baiji, the sister of thehad a Thakur over lording them. Nearby villages aisinghpura, Narsinghpura were probably all named after some Rajput scion. The nearest town Chomu, too had its small palace and reigning Rajput, who had sold the palace to a Bania who turned it into an atta mill. Kaladera. Never really found out why it was called that. Me and my spice (better than the word spouse!) had first gone there in early 1994 to carry on our work in hand block printing and natural dyeing. Kala-black, dera-campsite/settlement. We preferred to think of it as Kala-art. Kaladera is a big village with a population of around ten thousand. It has a mix of forty castes and sub-castes which do not intermarry, both among Hindus and Muslims.

We came up with fourteen castes which worked with some natural material and did skilled handwork. Some who to this day carry on their traditional vocation – Kumavats-stone workers and masons, Manihars-lacquer bangle makers,Neelgars-indigo dyers, Chippas-block printers, Kumhars-potters, Lohars-metal workers, Patwas-thread workers, Khati-wood workers, Regars-leather workers, Sonhars-precious jewellery makers .Many others like basket weavers, weavers, metal jewelry casters had left their craft. Though there is a khadi wool blanket weaving workshop in the village and many castes have tried their hand at weaving.

Rajasthan. The land of chivalry and grandeur. And great home cooked vegetarian food. It has changed drastically in the fourteen years we have been visiting it, along with the world around it. We are not just talking about Jaipur and its huge new townships like Vidyadharnagar and Mansarovar (advertised as the biggest colony in Asia!) Which is now fighting over water resources; with brand new SEZ called the Mahindra World City coming up near it. And obviously a hundred new complexes, as land gets expensive in Delhi suburbs, land all the way on the highway to Jaipur and beyond is sold to property developers. Prices in Kaladera village have gone up up to 25 times in front of us, land in the village was hundred rupees a square yard is now Rs 2,500/- a square yard! Most village residents cannot afford the land now, and agricultural land is being bought by outsiders mostly. Soon land will be affordable only in dry districts of the country or where the ultra-left groups operate.

We can reach Kaladera, avoiding Jaipur altogether.Kaladera is the same distance from Delhi as Jaipur.And only forty kilometers from Jaipur.We catch the Jaipur bypass at Chandvaji, now a spanking new highway, also the route to the beautiful Samode palace, we reach Chomu on the Bikaner highway from Jaipur. From Chomu, Kaladera is just ten kilometers.Chomu is the biggest mandi near Jaipur and the region has good groundwater. So no sand dunes, only lehlahata green fields of wheat or mustard in winter, and many vegetable crops as the area has the Saini caste in abundance, who are great gardeners, even had one of their own as a local MLA lately.

Kaladera has its collection of havelis, owned by Banias, some of whom made loads of money trading in Assam and Calcutta in early twentieth century. The Patwa, thread-worker we work with saved up enough money over ten years to buy one of the dormant havelis, we found postmarked inland letter cards and letters lying half unburnt from early 1900’s.They were usually from Calcutta to Kaladera. Banias who are rich keep these havelis as reminders of their roots, occasionally using them for some functions or stopovers when they visit their favorite shrines in Rajasthan.Some women walk all the way barefoot from Kolkata, obviously taking the train barefoot too! One of the most famous pilgrimages is Khatu Shyamji; you can see hundreds of groups of dozens of people walking the highways barefoot with bright red, pink and yellow flags.

Most havelis lie dormant now with descendants spread all over India, slowly falling into ruins. Further up north is the Shekawati region famous for its painted havelis and as the origin of most of the ultra rich Marwari business families. Kaladera comes in the region known in local region as Dundlod, and the locals call their dialect as a khichdi of various dialects. There are many dialects in Rajasthan, a little harsher near Haryana, a little softer near Gujarat. The saying goes that water and language change every 10-12 kos ( a kos being roughly about two miles ).The creativity of using English words mixed up with Hindi is at its maximum in rural India where there is a perpetual shortage of English teachers in schools. We have come across words like “discursh”, a mix of discuss and nishkarsh in Hindi meaning conclusion. The word ‘jack’, the tool for lifting a punctured car, is used for asking whether you have a contact, or connections!

As one said earlier, there are forty castes in the village. Around seven among Muslims and rest among Hindus. Each caste has their own collective knowledge of life, of work, of spirituality and of pleasure. Each caste has its own experience of the modern urban world and how they deal economically, socially with it. Each caste is very secretive about its knowledge and experience domains. Rarely does it cross boundaries in rural India with friendships across castes. The children of the family of Chippas, printers, we work with had other caste friends in school but soon after school most of their friends were of their own caste. We once wanted to sponsor a cricket tournament with the rule that no team would have more than six of one caste and we were told no such team was possible! We have read since childhood either sad stories about Dalits or the widows of Brahmins and Rajput households. Working with artisan castes one realizes how caste based most Hindi literature is. Among the Chippa caste there was widow remarriage, as you cannot have a hand going waste, also men and women worked together, washing and dyeing in the river nearby. We read or know very little about the social and cultural histories of the middle castes of middle India. It’s the big silence about the big majority. Anyone who has stayed in a village knows how the neighborhoods are separated by caste, few are mixed. The Dhobis stay in one part, as the Banias and Brahmins in another, the SC’s on the outskirts of the village. The village market square had shops belonging to only the Banias. Over the 90’s many banias have sold off and moved to Jaipur and the farming castes like Sainis, Jats, Ahir-Yadavs are buying up shops for their sons and getting into modern small retail like stationery shops, tailor shops, readymade garment and gift shops, shoe stores and watch stores. When we had reached the village there were a few dozen shops, some at the bus stand, mostly in the center. Now there are hundreds, with every mohalla having their own too. The concept of shops, residences and workspaces we are preparing for Delhi would seal up every village and small town in India. The caste of Patwas which strung together necklaces, made rakhis,thread camel decorations move from mela to mela,mazhar to mandir,selling their stuff have now transformed into small superstores of cosmetics, plastic toys and infant readymade garments sourced from Sadar and Gandhi Market in Delhi. They use the empty returning trucks on the Delhi-Jaipur-Ahemdabad route as their transport. Kumavats, the traditional builders and stone workers have opened welding, metal fabrication and construction material supply businesses, as wood becomes expensive and most people can afford only sheet metal doors, sometimes a tin sheet welded onto an angle frame. Once a young Kumavat mason told me how half his community works outside and he had worked on an Oberoi project in Himachal.He said he could earn much more in Mumbai but no one would know if he died on the streets there. Now with a construction boom in the village he has turned contractor and is very busy.

The Chippas, the printing caste we have worked intensively with over the past 14 years use to traditionally print the Ghaghra fabrics worn by women of all castes. Slowly the ghaghra went out of fashion with the coming of saris. The Ahemdabad mills started printing the traditional motifs on fabric and there was a major decline of hand block printing. Many Chippas shifted trade becoming jeep drivers, opening ration depots or khad-beej shops, mill made fabric stores and tailoring shops. In the sixties there was a major upsurge in demand for the Bagru vegetable print and lehariya tie-dye by the hippies in the west and since then there has been continuous innovation in process of hand printing, with its cyclical patterns of boom and bust. Many Chippas along with Banias, and partition refugee Sindhi community got into screen printing in Sanganer, the textile printing mandi near Jaipur. Supplying all India with fabrics, saris and bedcovers, there was a major shift from hand block and natural printing. Till today Bagru remains the biggest center for syahi-begar and dabu. Syahi is waste iron fermented in molasses for black printing, and begar is an alum based paste for red print when developed in alizarin (a first generation dye invented by the Germans to destroy the dye monopoly of the British, traditionally the madder climber or al root was used). Dabu is the mud-resist which is special to this region made from potters’ clay, slaked lime, tree gum and insect eaten wheat waste. Many Chippas have turned exporters and are crorepatis, till date these processes are a monopoly of the Chippa community, with store chains like FabIndia and Anokhi being large buyers of printed fabric and producers of readymade garments.

Kaladera is also one of the dozen villages around Jaipur which practices this craft of natural dyeing and mud-resist. There were villages specializing in their own prints and no one copied the other village prints. Some made huge bedcover like sheets called jajam to cover huge rooms for collective functions; some made wedding chuniris and some ghaghra fabric. There is even a hierarchy of color, with the Rajputs wearing sunhera colors - oranges, reds and pinks which were more fugitive and needed redyeing regularly so they would look fresh and smell good. The farmer castes like Jats wore indigo and green while the lowest could only afford the easiest available grey dye - kashish or ferrous sulphate. So higher the caste less its desire of fixed colors! The lower caste needed fixed colors as they could only afford one or two ghaghras a year.

With us, many graphic designers, illustrators, artists from People Tree and young people interested in craft came over to Kaladera, over the years. There were long haired males and short haired women. One artist friend, while he was sitting in the village square sketching the scene was invited to sketch someone’s old father before he died. He even got a free samosa and a chai for sketching a halwai!

In the initial six-seven years we used to do the dyeing with the family as production was small and their children were young, and could only join in after coming from school. Our printer Raghunath Nama, had to fight off many of his caste kin who thought that we would learn the secrets of natural dyeing and open our own workshop. The family joked that they were getting labor from the big city to do their work, and pay them for it! Traditionally the wood blocks used to be very small, and mostly floral. Later exports defined the prints with Japanese desiring big fish prints and African motif bedcovers. We and People Tree created modern graphic prints and fun patterns based out of a visual language coming out of Indian creativity. Initially we used to go in our Maruti 800 and buy the natural dyes from an ayurvedic herb wholesaler in Jaipur. Over the years now there are wholesalers coming to the village to sell Harda, the base dye which has natural tannins to fix the prints, Anar Chilca or pomegranate rind from Himachal anardana factories, for yellow dyeing. Natural dyeing needs mineral mordants like Alum to fix the colors. Each fabric has to be dyed 3-4 times in natural dyeing and printing while in modern chemical processes you dye just once and print on top or just do printing without dyeing. So the whole natural dyeing process takes much longer and is much more effort.

In the initial years there was electricity only for a few hours a day and the closest phone was ten kilometers away. Now there is regular electricity, a good road to Jaipur and many mobile phone towers. Young men buy mobikes with brakes that play the latest Hindi film tune on pressing the brakes. The latest Hindi and English music is remixed with Rajasthani folk songs by local DJ’s who charge a packet for wedding parties, arranging the mandatory lights and dance floor. One can hear even techno strains coming from some far away dhani in the fields during late night celebrations! There is cable TV and internet, even broadband, mostly used to rip off movie and music VCDs.

Many years ago on the gau-char or fodder lands, an industrial area was developed by the state government .Initially no one came for a few years as the electricity, road or telecom infrastructure was insufficient. As the region has good groundwater resources, Coca Cola set up its bottling plant in Kaladera.It was the first big factory in Kaladera.With it came the Bihari labor influx who agreed to work at much lower wages longer hours. Rents started going up as ITI trained skilled labor needed rooms to stay. While the Biharis were allowed by farmers to make huts on the fields. Many Kaladera villagers make money now selling provisions to these migrants. Even a small cinema hall came up with ten rupee tickets, but is having a difficult time sustaining itself as the competition from VCD’s is unbeatable. The day the movie is released in Jaipur; same evening its VCD’s are available in Kaladera.

The ground water was dropping in Kaladera before we came. Raghunath told us that it was five feet when he was young. It was thirty five when we arrived. Farmers who with tractors and boring wells could do wheat farming and grow much higher acreages now, as compared to earlier when they would grow rain fed crops like bajra,jowar, barley and chana. We heard of bore wells being deepened every year we were there. As the soil is sandy the wheat crop needs up to nine waterings compared to four or five in Haryana.

The present sarpanch of the village, a harijan, won the elections with the biggest margin against the Coca Cola nominee. He has recently bought a second hand Maruti Esteem from Maharashtra. He has been helped by the anti Coca Cola activist brigade who landed in Kaladera from all over Rajasthan to scare Coca Cola into creating good cement roads in the village, water recharging wells and scholarships in village schools. In Kerala they shut down the plant, in Rajasthan they decide to make them work for the village and at the same time heavily line some pockets of power. As half the village is not farm owning, they also blame the farmers for the decreasing water levels. Socially and politically the traditional farming dominant castes like Jats and Ahirs are not well liked by the many minority caste groups. They usually laugh at them and say they sit at the chai shops all day while women and children take care of weeding, of feeding the cattle. Milk provides the cash liquidity to farmers as they grow their own fodder, which has become expensive for non farming castes to buy. Now farmers are known to give bigger dowries than the Banias!

Raghunath became very successful with the innovations we did with mud-resist on expensive fabrics like tussar and georgette. He has bought a flat and shop in Jaipur.His two grand-daughters go to swanky DPS school in Jaipur, and he goes up and down to Kaladera in his Maruti Gypsy. We had a dance party in his home in Kaladera a couple of years ago and invited his neighborhood children, both boys and girls. Also all the women printers were invited and male printers were only allowed in if they would dance! It was a rollicking success. Men and women, girls and boys grooving to “Dhoom Macha le”.Since then it has become common for girls to have such parties in the Gangaur month, boys mostly yet not allowed.

In traditional village life in Rajasthan, women did not speak out loud, in fact they whispered in front of elder males and the ghoonghat was almost waist long. With no freedom movement, or social reform or NGO spreading awareness change still comes. Regular electricity and TV has done its job. Women were not taken to the movie hall ten kilometers away in Chomu.With TV the world came to them, also soon MTV and music channels, saas bahu serials also had no women in ghoonghat. Now one can see many women without ghoonghat and young unmarried girls in jeans too. There are fashions of the season even in the three hundred rupee sari range and a five rupee copy of the latest nail polish colors is available within a month in the village. Young men in the village say that they now feel neither of the village, nor of the city.

Changing tastes, changing crops, even changing tastes in entertainment. There used to be a few stone houses and havelis made for Banias and Bagras, a caste of landed Brahmins who were the hereditary Patels or headmen of the village, who have recently allowed widow remarriage as many males in their caste cannot find women to marry, an increasing phenomenon in Rajasthan among many castes due to the skewed male-female ratio. Now almost the whole village has stone or brick houses, with the SC’s, Chippas and other emerging OBC’s having the most urban looking houses, some with the white fluffy Pomeranian pet dog!

It depends who you talk to, but rarely someone other than the Rajputs and Brahmins says that times earlier were better. As a village elder says “today everybody is a Raja”. This year one of the latest bhajans which you hear above the competing ‘decks’ or audio-systems blaring early in the morning to compete whose is the loudest, was “Bum-Chik-Bum”, guess which god-our very own Bum-chum, Bum Bum Bhole Shivji! Slowly but surely feudalism moves into entrepreneurship, mass media moves into homes, but jhad-phook (broomstick village magic) ,caste marriages and political alignments remain strong and durable. One has always felt that there is so much interesting change which is neither covered by the metro based English press nor the upper-caste dominated Hindi press which sometimes subtly sometimes visibly pushes the grand Hindutva agenda. One feels media savvy and resource heavy upper castes and classes are going to be continuously challenged by a continuing upsurge in social, economic and political aspirations of the emerging castes. They have the desire to take over whatever the elites have done, so we are in for what the Chinese call “interesting times” and as the famous BBC anchor Mark Tully says” No full stops in India” First published in First City Magazine, May 2007

Mr. Mushtaq Ahmed learnt the craft of camel bone carving from Mr Abdul Khalib, a renowned carver. He has diversified and applied their skills to working with wood. He received a Merit certificate in 1994. Ligi George is in conversation with the craftsman. Why was ivory carved in earlier times? The primary reason is aesthetics. Work on ivory looks good. It is also a wonderful, interesting and easy medium to work in. What is the difference between ivory & camel bone? There is a greater demand for ivory then camel bone - a sort of unstated hierarchy between mediums. People will select ivory pieces but the same work on camel bone doesn't have such a demand. People don't regard camel bone the same as ivory. Some of the piece will take 6 month to complete. Working with ivory is easier than bone. Also ivory, because of its milky pure whiteness doesn't need to be cleaned or polished. Ivory has to be stored in a cool place in summer because it breaks easily keep in hot weather so work has to undertaken in a cooled atmosphere. But now, with restrictions on ivory carving we have adapted to newer, easily procurable raw materials like camel bone and wood. As the camel is a big animal and has large bones it became a valid substitute. According to the carve, when they have to make big pieces the removed extra parts are cut down to make small products like bead for necklaces, different type of clips, lockets, paper cutting knife, scissors, birds, book mark etc. What is the Process & Technique of on Camel bone carving? Camel bone is first cleaned with Hydroxyl to remove impurities attached to the bone. It is cut to the desired dimensions and then placed in boiled water with Sang Murmur (marble chips) powder overnight to remove any residual impurities. The powder is available in the market at Rs. 6-8 per kg. The boiling process is repeated as a final step to achieve the desired white colour. The strength of the whiteness depends upon the boiling of the bone. It is also washed with hydroxyl and water, water after which it is polished. The bone is now ready to be carved. The design is first drawn on paper and then transferred onto the prepared bone surface. These design vary from flora and fauna to hunting scenes and processions. To make the lamp 100 pieces of bone are used. Particularly the knee bone the camel is used for all purposes. Where do you buy the bone? Bone is bought from an abattoir at Rs. 7-8 per kg. What is your current market? The artisan have to travel to urban fairs and markets to make a sustained livelihood as there is no local demand for their products. The prices of the finished products, like a lamp costs Rs.10000 to 15000 is due to the workmanship. Village people don't have enough money and the product made up with plastic will get easily and cheap. Nowadays hair clips or necklaces are the most popular items. This craft has received a great deal of attention from abroad. The craftsman recollected this one time at Dilli Haat he got an export order. But that was extremely rare and a one-off. As there is diminishing markets the knowledge is not being taught to the younger generation.

Bone-carving is an old tradition in India, though ivory - till its use was legally prohibited about two decades ago - was the material most commonly used. As early as the 6th century A.D., Baraha Mihir, an important astronomer and mathematician, also interested in architecture and furniture design, mentions in his treatise on furniture that bedsteads made of timbers beneficial to mankind should preferably have carved ivory floral panels to enhance their beauty (Prahbas Sen, Crafts of West Bengal, Mapin, Ahmedabad, 1994, p.136). The sound of a conch-shell being blown is one of the enduring sounds of prayer in Hindu households and temples; equally enduring are a large number of items that are part of tradition and ritual, or of a decorative ethos that continues. Items as disparate as conch shell bangles (shankha) worn by Bengali brides, ivory figarines and chessmen, and combs made of horn are familiar in every day life.

Practitioners

Mushtaq Ahmad, who carves items out of camel bone, hails from Lucknow. His son Ashtaq Ahmad says that the choice of camel bone stems chiefly from the limitations created by the banning of ivory. Father and son represent a large group of artisans affected by the ban on ivory, most of whom have continued to practice their craft using other materials. Mushtaq Ahmad used to carve in ivory till that was permitted. Ashtaq Ahmad has learnt the craft from his father; however unlike a lot of Indian crafts, camel-bone carving is not generally a hereditary craft, and is not passed on from generation to generation. Mushtaq Ahmad learnt the craft from an ustad (a skilled craftsperson). Ashtaq Ahmad says that there are a group of very skilled camel-bone carvers in a particular area of Lucknow (the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh), which he holds to be the most accomplished center of camel-bone carving. The camel-bone carving in other areas in Uttar Pradesh, he believes, visibly lack the delicacy and finesse that his father - a National Award winner - can create.

Technique

The raw material, camel-bone, says Ashtaq Ahmad, is supplied by specific butchers. He explains that all the tools used by his father and him are made by them - no specific tools for carving camel bone are retailed. According to Ashtaq Ahmad, among conventional tools, the ari (saw) is used. Other finer tools are made out of the metal spokes in cycles and umbrellas, by the camel-bone carvers themselves. The range of products made is strikingly eclectic, ranging from lamp bases and small boxes to interesting necklaces and ear-rings. Several of the boxes displayed by the father-son team were carved with extreme delicacy and care, with designs that resemble filigree tracery. The boxes were in various sizes, with a box with dimensions of 25 cm x 11 cm x 8 cm taking up to 10-15 days to make the carve. Simple necklace strings, often with coloured beads interspersed with the polished (and sometimes etched) pieces of bone are strung together relatively quickly, with it being possible to make up to two dozen in a day. The same is true of bracelets and ear-rings, made interesting by combining different shades within camel-bone to create a textured effect. Although the necklaces and bracelets are relatively inexpensive - costing around Rs 25 - the larger and more delicately carved items like boxes and lamp bases cost a substantial amount, going into a couple of thousand rupees - not much money when one sees the astonishing skill which they have been created, and the time-consuming nature of the process.

Issue #10, 2023 ISSN: 2581- 9410 The hair of Rajasthan’s one-humped dromedary camels is short and scratchy; it bears no similarity to the long and silky fibres of the two-humped Bactrian camel that fetches a premium in international markets. Nevertheless, in Rajasthan, camel hair was once an important resource in the local camel culture, even if yields were only around 1 kg/head. A range of utilitarian articles were crafted from it, including ropes, blankets, rugs and even jackets. These were still very much in use when I first started my research in Rajasthan’s Pali district some 30 years ago. At the time, the shearing, spinning and weaving of camel hair was a key activity in the annual herding cycle of the Raika, the people who represent Rajasthan’s major pastoralist community. Shearing marked the transition from the cold to the hot season; it was a communal ritual performed around the time of Holi for which the herders aggregated in their home villages to jointly shear each other’s herds. The purpose of shearing was not just to harvest the wool, but also to keep the camels healthy. It was a sign of good camel management, for, during the wintertime, microscopic mange mites, often burrow themselves deep into the skin, causing itchiness, hair loss, and inflammation that can even lead to death if left untreated. Removing a layer of hair exposes them to sunlight and keeps mange, locally known as pom, under control. As if they are aware of this, most camels subject themselves willingly to being shorn. Several men crouch around the recumbent animal with big iron or aluminium clippers, in an almost meditative act. Sometimes they get carried away and use the body surface of the camel as a canvas on which they create elaborate patterns. (Even today, there are still a couple of so-called camel hair artists that trim and dye intricate images into the hair of the living camel, a process that is said to take 3 years ).

One of my first striking memories is a visit to the village of Anji-ki-dhani at the outskirts of Jojawar during Holi in 1991. At the time this village was famous for its large count of camels that were said to number several thousands. Herds were spread out on the fields that surrounded Anji-ki-dhani and were shorn one after the other by small teams of Raika who then brought the wool back to the village in large burlap sacks. Old men were walking around and using a drop spindle to turn the wool into thread.

Members of the Meghwal community had come from elsewhere and set up looms to weave the thick yarn into the rugs called bhakhl that the herders take on migration to sleep on and stake out their temporary residences. They would be there for a few weeks before moving on to another location.

As Rajasthan’s camel population shrank, this traditional system disappeared, and it has been a long time since the Meghwal weavers came to villages to temporarily set up their looms. With them whole skill sets in how to best handle the tricky camel hair evaporated. In the early 2010s, we set up a project to revive camel hair value chains, hoping that this would contribute to camel conservation by providing additional income for their ancestral herders. The idea was to develop innovative products that would attract urban buyers. To this end we worked together with wool experts and designers. The wool expert, Kamal Kishore, analysed camel hair samples from different parts of Rajasthan and came to interesting conclusions: The wool from the Jaisalmer area was finer than that from other parts of Rajasthan, probably due to the temperatures being lower there in the winter. (Hair growth is dependent on temperature variation between summer and winter, and dromedaries living in Kenya where the temperature stays almost constant throughout the year-round have no hair to speak of and are not shorn.) With an average length of 5.9 cm, its fibres had an average thickness of 23 micron, although the majority of fibres were in the 17-20 micron range, which is equivalent to Cashmere quality. The sample from Pali district had an average fibre thickness of 26 micron and an average length of 5.4 cm. The conclusion from these tests was that camel wool needed to be separated by fibre quality, with some of the fine wool being suitable for soft and high-quality garments, and the coarser section providing opportunities for manufacturing bags and carpets. Kamal Kishore also suggested that we separate the wool by colour to be able to produce designs with naturally dyed wool. He produced a colour chart with about 7 different shades of wool. We then found out that in the Jaisalmer area, spinning skills were still alive among women who used the traditional charkha. Furthermore, some of them, especially widows, were happy to turn the sorted wool into yarn, as it was an activity they could do in groups and in the confines of their home. This was was important as social rules in this conservative area confined them to their homes.

The balls of fine yarn were then sent to Kullu where they were woven into stoles, while the thicker yarn was given to a weaver in Jalore district who produced variations on the traditional bhakhl in new patterns, introducing splashes of funky colour and depictions of camels.

We felt that the products were amazing, both aesthetically and ethically. However, due to the need to transport the wool several times over long distances from herders to spinners to weavers, the costs were substantial. And the income for the herders from the sale of wool was negligible, and not sufficient to generate financial incentives for camel conservation. Hence our efforts as a camel conservation agency shifted to camel dairying which can provide income throughout the year. It is time for another effort by dedicated people with new ideas and energy to create a range of high-end products that reflect Rajasthan’s desert heritage, especially in light of the upcoming International Year of Camelids in 2024.