Gandhi Shilp Exhibition

Today after my Sunday breakfast we drove to one of those govt. sponsored exhibitions of art. It had artifacts mostly from North India like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan. The first stall I stopped at was that of Rajasthani Blue pottery. Beautiful art crafts like soap holders, bowls, tiles, decorative wall plates, wall hooks, ear rings and bracelets and beads to make jewelry.

The shop keeper took interest to share the information of how it is exactly made; the base ingredient being Quartz which is used in fine powder form which is mixed with other powders and gum and are developed into desired shapes. They are heated at different levels during the design. After sketching and painting on them, natural colors from grinding colorful stones are used to color the item. The item is reheated now at a different temperature. At the end of heating, most colors change their color like green turns blue or brown turns red. And a final glaze is applied to give it a finishing touch. The whole process sounded very tedious and it reflects in the beauty of the art.

The shop keeper was very proud to mention that he conducts lessons on this art in Rajasthan and recently he had two French women who learnt from him J

I decided to buy a set of ear rings and 2 pairs of beads so I can make a set of ear ring at home, from my previous hobby of making ear ringsJ. The paintings on the tiles looked like a sari or a dress J

Then I saw some wooden artifacts from Uttar Pradesh such as wooden cars, tractors, bicycles, spatulas and brass embedded tables.

One of the best stalls was that of the marble carvings. The stall had very intricate carvings of various gods on colored marble like white, black, green, red. The best one was that of Lord Venkateshwara with very detailed and sharp carvings of dancers and devotees.

The others which were equally marvelous were that of Lord Ganesha, The Samudra manthan episode, Buddha, decorative tortoise. I grabbed pictures of few.

The whole place is quite big with other stalls of paintings, traditional dresses, bamboo artifacts, traditional footwears etc. It was way too sunny for me to continue, so we decided to leave until we hit another Rajasthani stall of Kawad. (Read the next post to know what is KAWAD – extremely beautiful!)