Woodstock School Class of ’81 and Others, in 1980
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Sunday, my last day in India, I hired a car to go into central Delhi, where I visited the Crafts Museum (on the advice of friend and commenter Alice). The collection is very interesting, some of it so beautiful and well made that I had to wonder where one draws the line between “handicrafts” and Read More…
Sunday, my last day in India, I hired a car to go into central Delhi, where I visited the Crafts Museum (on the advice of friend and commenter Alice). The collection is very interesting, some of it so beautiful and well made that I had to wonder where one draws the line between “handicrafts” and “fine art.” Explanations were of variable quality – some very enlightening, others non-existent. Poor lighting made it hard to really appreciate some of this fine work, sadly, especially the textiles – and I do love textiles, though I was already overwhelmed by many days of shopping for saris.
When you finish with the museum part, there’s a small courtyard surrounded by booths selling more crafts, some quite good, and the usual dance troupe – seems to be the same family, and certainly the same style, as employed at Dilli Haat.
There is also a museum shop, featuring a clutter of stuff from all over India that you might not easily find elsewhere. I loved the wrought-iron works by tribals from Madhya Pradesh (which I recognized thanks to a placard I had seen in the museum – the shop is devoid of explanation). These pieces feature delicate dancers in a style reminiscent of Native America’s Kokopeli. Human and animal figures are arrayed to form window gratings and other objects unfortunately too large and heavy to take home this trip. Someday. I did buy a little monkey, and another statuette whose provenance I know nothing about (pictured above).
I also bought a collection of plaster figurines from Bengal. I’ve seen these for years at the Central Cottage Industries Emporium in Delhi – and much better ones years ago in Calcutta – but always wondered about them because they seem too breakable to be kids’ toys, yet not artsy enough to be intended as decoration. But, thanks to another helpful museum placard, I now may have an explanation for them – somewhat different from the explanation I’d found for some similar figures at the Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe.
One big glass case in the Crafts Museum holds an entire miniature village, bustling with equisitely detailed and realistic clay figures (about 6″ tall), painted and dressed in real cloth. The attached placard explained that this was the work of a group of clay artisans originally famed for their representations of Hindu deities. The British in India, uninterested in gods, instead encouraged the sculptors to represent real Indian people of all sorts and professions, as souvenirs the Brits could take home to illustrate life in India to their untravelled friends and relatives.
My guess is that the set of figurines I bought is based on pieces originally intended to illustrate the staff of a typical British household in the Raj era, though this modern version makes a few subtle (or sloppy) changes. Let’s see whether we can figure out who all these people are.
From the left:
any thoughts on this? I could be wrong about all of it!
Various forms of transportation in Jaipur. Missing: horse tonga (carriage), horse cart, donkey cart, human-pulled cart. You might also like: No related posts.
Various forms of transportation in Jaipur. Missing: horse tonga (carriage), horse cart, donkey cart, human-pulled cart.
Few shop signs in Jaipur are written in the Roman alphabet, even when they contain English words – all the words are transliterated into Hindi. This is not a rare phenomenon in India, but I’ve never seen it on this scale anywhere else. I amused myself filming a few and pronouncing the words as written. Read More…
Few shop signs in Jaipur are written in the Roman alphabet, even when they contain English words – all the words are transliterated into Hindi. This is not a rare phenomenon in India, but I’ve never seen it on this scale anywhere else. I amused myself filming a few and pronouncing the words as written. English subtitles provided for those who can’t understand (or hear, given the background noise) my accent.