Wooden Cutlery
Location: Udaigiri, Nellore District, Andhra Pradesh,India
About 50 highly skilled and motivated women from the Muslim community and a few other older masters are engaged in hand carved wooden cutlery and hair clips embellished by Persian motiffs passed on from earlier times.
Here the intervention though very basic but was of high value and need. We first initiated them into the use of measuring scale and the geometry box. With the installation of wood working machinery by the dept. of Handicrafts the need was to make them understand the idea of replication. These girls who left school half way are now, at least a few, familiar with the idea of one eight of inch or three forth of an inch. We familiarized them with contemporary dining spaces and objects through browsing magazines to help them get a feel of our thematic approach in creating newer flat ware.
We introduced the concept of making sets for possible use as disposables by individual buyers or theme hotels/airways. This would create bulk orders and better economic benefit.
Location: Udaigiri, Nellore District, Andhra Pradesh,India
About 50 highly skilled and motivated women from the Muslim community and a few other older masters are engaged in hand carved wooden cutlery and hair clips embellished by Persian motiffs passed on from earlier times.
Here the intervention though very basic but was of high value and need. We first initiated them into the use of measuring scale and the geometry box. With the installation of wood working machinery by the dept. of Handicrafts the need was to make them understand the idea of replication. These girls who left school half way are now, at least a few, familiar with the idea of one eight of inch or three forth of an inch. We familiarized them with contemporary dining spaces and objects through browsing magazines to help them get a feel of our thematic approach in creating newer flat ware.
We introduced the concept of making sets for possible use as disposables by individual buyers or theme hotels/airways. This would create bulk orders and better economic benefit.
Sheet Metal Shaping
Location: Chandur, Nalgonda District, Andhra Pradesh, India
About 100 families from the Vishwakarma community in this cluster are engaged in producing urns and water vessels by beating and shaping brass and copper sheet.They are very skilled but a disillusioned lot. Since this category of vessels are today available machine made in steel and aluminum, market for their products has come down, the story similar to other crafts.
Our intervention here was to design regular utility table ware in a newer form and character familiar to them and which could be achieved only through shaping by hand. End of the workshop they were convinced that they were many possibilities to exploit their skill sets beyond making spherical water vessels.
Location: Chandur, Nalgonda District, Andhra Pradesh, India
About 100 families from the Vishwakarma community in this cluster are engaged in producing urns and water vessels by beating and shaping brass and copper sheet.They are very skilled but a disillusioned lot. Since this category of vessels are today available machine made in steel and aluminum, market for their products has come down, the story similar to other crafts.
Our intervention here was to design regular utility table ware in a newer form and character familiar to them and which could be achieved only through shaping by hand. End of the workshop they were convinced that they were many possibilities to exploit their skill sets beyond making spherical water vessels.
Metal Mirror craft
Location: Aranmula, Kerala, India
Aranmula Metal Mirror (Kannadi) is so perfect a mirror that it can be mistaken for the ordinary mercury coated mirror.
There seemed to be needed to establish the fact that it is made by hand polishing a cast metal alloy and illustrate by design. This we felt could be achieved by embossing the cast piece and polishing the raised portion leaving the rest of the visible metal unfinished. The craftsmen were firmly against the idea. After constant persuasion they attempted and were successful, and according to Mr. Gopa Kumar (a senior metal mirror maker), "for the first time in 500 years Aranmula Kannadi history something like this has been tried!"
This innovation we believe did three things - freed the craftsman's mindset which was restrictive over times to attempt newer mirror applications, an illustration to designers and merchandisers to explore possibilities, has reinforced the metal mirror's unique identity and given it a new dimension / character.
