Sunday, 15 January 2017

When shop hopping become serious business

Hey guys,
I'm writing a blog for the first time ever and I'm pretty excited about it. So I'm a student in pearl academy of fashion and this blog is basically based on my college module: Introduction to Design Tools and Techniques where we were given few topics like Indian-crafts, International-crafts, Folk-arts, Tribal-arts and Design Movements, in which we had to do a lot of  research and had to visit places to gathered as much information we can get. So in order to do that we visited a couple of places.
 Day 1 we went to Crafts Museum located in Pragati Maidan (New Delhi). It was my first visit there and I had no clue about how it was going to be and I was very excited to go there and It was an amazing places to see different types crafts and arts of India, one can actually learn a lot about Indian arts and crafts, tradition, religion and various other things. When I went there I saw some really interesting stuff. I went to a place where there was small courtyard with different types of houses in different states of India and it was such a great experience to see so many different cultures under one roof. As I move forward to see more, I saw that some people were dancing, singing and playing instruments of their region from where they belong and when I went to them asked about the dance and where they came from then one of them answered that they are from Odisa and this form of dancing is known as Ghumura, a tribal folk dance performed on a folk music. Then there were shops nearby of different states from Gujarat, Rajasthan to Kashmir to Assam and many more. Moving ahead from there I went to the gallery where all the arts and crafts were displayed, there was appliqué and patchwork of Gujarat, bandhani (Tie and Dye technique) and mirror work of Gujarat. chamba rumal of Himachal Pradesh, kashida and jamwar (techniques & style of Embroidery) of Jammu and Kashmir, bhandhej of Rajasthan, patola sarees of Gujarat, brocade and silk sarees of Banaras, zardozi embroidery of Uttar Pradesh, Phulakri embroidery of Punjab, this was all what I saw in the museum but there are many other interesting things kept there and one should must visit it and it’s an amazing experience. 
On Day 2 we went to Dilli Haat, unlike the crafts museum I have visited Dilli Haat so many times and shopped a lot, but this time it was different I went there with a pen and a notebook in my hand, and when I start looking at the things I realized that I had never observed them in detail before. Whenever something caught my fancy, I used to buy ut without understanding the details of it, so it was completely a different experience to go to Dilli Haat to research. So I explored it and learned a lot and took a lot of pictures.
People were selling different textiles, crafts, paintings, accessories and many other things, I saw some really different things there which caught my attention as I never saw before like I saw mosaic lamps with embedded colored glasses of Jaipur Rajasthan, handmade grass baskets and kitchen utilities of Mirzapur Uttar Pradesh, there were handmade bells which is made by the mixture of five different metals and it was  from Kutch Gujarat, then I saw some bamboo craft hanging from the ceiling so I asked the shopkeeper about them, he said they are handmade bamboo lamps from Odisa and they use bamboo strips and weave them all by their hands, then there was blue pottery of Delhi, after that I saw some people making different things there, at first I saw a potter who was making clay pots. Then there was a man painting on cow which was made up of paper Mache and the craft was from Bhopal, then a man was making shoes (jutti). Then I found a group of people from Rajasthan performing kalbeliya folk dance.
Then there was an interesting event going on India-Iran craft interaction, where there were many interesting Iranian crafts and textiles were present and many craftsmen were making and demonstrating the techniques of different crafts and arts, they were demonstrating Iranian calligraphy art, block printing of Iran, handmade carpet weaving.
That event was basically showing the similarities between the techniques of making crafts and textiles between the two country the only thing which differs in the crafts was there culture and traditions otherwise both the countries are using  almost similar techniques in there crafts and textiles. 
So these were the two visits where we got a lot of knowledge about the Indian and international crafts and arts, after that our step two was to choose one thing from the five topics which were given to us. So I researched about them a little more then I finally decided that I m gonna work on kalamkari painting and block printing of Andhra Pradesh because I found it very interesting as it includes both painting and block-printing techniques which makes it different from other block printed arts so because of that I chose it as my topic.




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