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Craft

ART
Crafts Earthenware
 

Unassuming and fragile, earthen pottery nevertheless has a rich tradition in India. In most States, the potter fashions clay into pots,  jars, tumblers and platters of myriad shapes, ornamental as well as useful. Except in the rains, the village potter's wheel is never idle. Like the weaver and the blacksmith, the potter too is part of the traditional village community.

Gujarat provides cooking and storage pots painted in red, black and white with geometric, floral and animal patterns, Uttar Pradesh tall jars with shiny black finish, Rajasthan highly polished black ware for preserving oil and ghee, the Kashmir Valley, Delhi and Jaipur pottery with blue glaze and flowery motifs. 

Villages in the Eastern belt are mostly made of mud and
especially in Bankura, Bardhaman and  Birbhum districts,
temples have walls of wonderful terracotta panels. Images
of deities and earthen lamps are also fashioned out of
clay, especially at the time of religious festivities.  In
Northern India, diyas (small earthenware lamps) and
small clay icons of Ganesha and Lakshmi flood the market
around Diwali, the Festival of Lights. 

In Bengal, life-size images of Sarasvati, Lakshmi, Kali but especially of Durga (astride a lion accompanied by her four children, killing a demon) are made every year with the utmost of care and decorated with great splendour – only to be immersed in the water after the act of worship.
 

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Metal Ware
 

Ancient India used to have an international reputation for her brass and bell metal work. The technology of metalworking had been well developed by 2500 B.C. This manifested itself in exquisite yet sturdy images and icons in temples and household niches, lamps, platters and other items required for acts of worship, in gold, silver, copper, brass, bronze, and other mixed metals and alloys.

The world-famous dancing figure of Nataraja, a work in the Chola tradition, epitomises this achievement. Villages from Tamil Nadu mould and assemble brass oil-lamps (dipa), standing as well as hanging ones, adorned with decorative swans or women.

But what is even more remarkable is that many everyday household equipments in India are art objects. The kitchen ladle, the nut-cracker, the water-pot, are all imbued with the artistic spirit. The water-pot (ghara, kalash, churru) itself can take on myriad forms and shapes and have embossed borders.

Benares and Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh are famous for their hand-made or hand-finished brass, copper and even stainless-steel implements of traditional shapes. The blacksmith is traditionally a most important part of the village community. Tribal metalware, for example that of Bastar, Madhya Pradesh, is mainly of iron hammered and twisted into oil lamps.
 


                                                                                                                           
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Wood Craft
 

Woodcraft ranges from select temple craftsmen to makers of bullock-carts. In temples as well as richer households, there are carved wooden doors and door-posts. Wooden gateways are found in Orissa, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra. 

The speciality of Tamil Nadu was the vahana (temple chariot), a massive structure thick with delicate figurines.

Andhra Pradesh, Mysore and Karnataka are famous for their elephants and combs, carved mostly out of sandalwood. 

Many havelis (mansions) of Rajasthan displayed screens, friezes, windows, and canopies of wooden fretwork. Domestic items like the karahi and the khanta too are crafted out of wood. 

 


                                                                                                                            
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Textile
 

India had possessed early the knowledge of cotton and fast dyestuff. Dyed and patterned    cotton cloth from India has been exported from pre-Roman times.

Karnataka is famous for dyeing and weaving of silk, Rajasthan for the dyeing of cotton with indigo and alazarin. Gujarat and Rajasthan have especially developed bandhni work (tying-and-dying of pinprick patterns on woollen shawls and fine cotton cloth). Block-printing with the help of wooden blocks and vegetable dyes is another speciality of Sanganer, Bagru, Jodhpur, Kota and other centres in Rajasthan. Gujarat and Orissa are renowned for ikat work (a complex process where, before the cloth is woven, the warp or weft threads, or both, are bundled and bound with bands resisting dye-stuffs, and then repeatedly dyed to create bands of patterns).

In Gujarat there used to be a thriving centre of silk patola saris of double ikat work in Ahmedabad, Surat, Patan etc. Sambalpur and Cuttack in Orissa, Pochampalli, Chirala and Puttapaka in Andhra Pradesh are still flourishing centres of ikat textiles.

West Bengal has the tradition of exquisitely spun and woven jamdani, baluchari, dhanekhali and shantipuri saris.From Kutch and Kathiawar in Gujarat come embroidery for doorway friezes, bags and garments. From Mathura and Vrindaban in Uttar Pradesh come metal-thread work.

North Eastern hill tribes turn out colourful shawls of patterns that are distintively their own. Kashmir provides the world with finely embroidered soft woolen shawls and carpets with wonderful designs, both using the paisley motif as a kind of trademark.
 
 

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