First models

I started making my first models this week using air-drying modeling clay, powder pigment and sheet metal.

I began by exploring making the traditional Mughal shape of a thumb ring. The first shot is upside down; traditionally, it would be worn with the way I have it in the second two shots, although sometimes for ceremonial purposes, wearers would display it this way round. It's practical purpose was to protect the hand and help to give the arrow force in archery, and rings for this purpose would have been made from jade or other stronger stone. The enameled versions one sees in books were more for show.



The original versions appear to have been more "bulbous" around the protruding part, but I didn't really like the way that looked.

I then started to make some of the pieces I'd drawn in the sketchbook. I also tried the idea I had had about making pieces with pigment, although I just applied it to the drying modeling clay. So, the pigment is actually kind of annoying (of course! it gets everywhere, duoh) although I do like the matte-ness of it. I want to read more about an exhibition I was told about that happened in London last year called ColourWallah where the artist apparently revived a lost art of rubbing pigment in to clay or stone to create these beautiful coloured slabs.

They also look like plaster casts as though I've had a thumb injury. I wondered if making them in carved jade and perfume-scented leather (as I'd been dreaming about) would make these anymore beautiful; I decided probably not, but I'm going to keep on making more just to see if I can find a shape that works. In my head it does!



I also made the concave ring I had begun to draw that I had intended would be lined with mirror-work of the kind you see in Rajasthani palaces. Except I like it simple.













I also drew on more research I did last week interviewing Pichhvai painter Desmond Lazaro on colour, form and ritual (which I will get down and document soon). We talked about point to line to plane as the root basis for all creative practice in India, and I began making circles and then using that system (point-line-plane) to create cones. The more Des and I spoke about circles, spheres and squares, added to the reading I'd already done on geometric placement in temples and sacred rituals (plus the wonderful geometric jewellery shapes I've showed you from South India), the more I'm feeling as though this formal geometry could be a unifying visual language for the final pieces.