Shola continued

We went to C.R Park to the market to find examples of Shola Pith craft and found these traditional Bengali wedding crowns (for bride and groom). The material is soft and appears to come in widths from around 2 inches in diameter to incredibly fine (and very fragile). These crowns aren't the finest examples, but useful to understand how the material is manipulated usually. As you can see from the inside, when 3D shapes are formed, it tends to be glued onto a paper, or paper and shola structure, where the shola still retains some of the external bark.

Nandita Pal Choudhuri, who has offered to help me find some makers to work with, sent the following images through of the process:




The scale is quite huge, which is potentially quite exciting. Trying to figure out what the transitory nature of the material might offer in terms of what it leaves behind. I started to deconstruct the crowns and reconfigure them . . . one issue is the trail of glue you leave on the new surface which would always remain once the shola had crumbled away . . .

Karvaad

The Karvaad shrines have pictoral narrative stories from the epics of the Mahabarata and Ramayana, as well as stories about local heroes, saints and patrons (wealthy clients could pay to have their own stories painted on the boxes). On this version, the sun and moon riding a horse and deer respectively open the doors to stories of Rama on one side and Krishna on the other. The innermost doors open to reveal statues of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana who are worshipped at the end of this story telling. Karvaad is one of Rajasthan's oral narrative traditions, which also include Phad, a scroll-based performative practice that employs the visual, oral, musical, dance and theatre traditions of the region in a 36 hour performance at the end of which the practitioner is considered to have healing, or shamanic, powers.

Boxes

Solah Pith

I did some more research on the icon-makers of Kolkata and discovered that there are around 100 carvers working just on the decorative pieces for the sculptures - the icon's jewellery. The material they use is called pith and is basically the inner core of cork. From June to around the end of September these carvers create the most extraordinarily decorative pieces that are then incorporated on to the icons in time for Durga Puja, which is around the middle of October usually (depending on the moon).



Today, I'm meeting an arts promoter from Kolkata who might be able to connect me with some of these carvers; the purity of the colour combined with the intricacy of the detail, holds some interesting possibilities for me to explore a decorative element to the project that may combine well with the strong colour and luminosity of araash. Exploring the possibilities, at least of the form these pieces might take (I need a scalpel to try and play with the decorative possibilities!), I made some paper models (excuse Barbie).

Gulab Singh Jorimahal

So, I went to Chandni Chowk's most famous attarwallah yesterday and had a preliminary conversation over bottles of essential oils to Krishan Mohan in the store about the process of attar making, the possibilities for transferring the scent to other materials, and whether or not (and how) solid perfumes are made in India. The answer to the last question is no, not exactly, or certainly not in the manner of the French in Grasse; solid perfumes in the West are essential oils mixed with wax. In India, "solid" is actually the lint, or dregs from the bottom of the pan, as it were, that congeal more readily. This "solid" perfume is sold incredibly cheaply, mostly blended, in small soapstone pots - for around 50 INR each. It is poured in to the pots liquid and slowly solidifies over time. It has the consistency of a cream, rather than the more solid wax. Food for thought.

Pigment

Thinking more about using pigment, I wondered about encasing it, so it was still moving but under glass, or in this case, crystal which is used in rings to encase small relief icon sculptures beneath. I've also been trying to contact Kate Dineen through her gallery; no luck yet. Meantime, I've got a number of someone in Jaipur who might be able to help and Faith Singh (a friend of mine, founder of Anokhi and the Jaipur Virasat Foundation) is also looking for araash makers who might be interested in playing. I'm concerned about the weight of these plaster-based objects and a few people have suggested the scale may be too small. I need to get down there.

Head to Toe

Trying to simplify the piece . . . more to go.