Sunday, January 24, 2010

Sanskriti Museum of Terracotta


Sanskriti Foundation's Museum of Indian Terracotta is located on Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road, at Ayanagar, just outside Delhi. Terracotta artists and potters from all over India have created on location a variety of exuberant and sophisticated figurettes and panels; these pieces are housed in aesthetic mud-walled enclosures.




Entry is free, and the Foundation offers residency programs for artists and scholars to reflect and contemplate, interact and get inspired, and create.





Sanskriti Museum of Everyday Art and Sanskriti Museum of Indian Textiles are co-located in the same campus. The former showcases plenty of metal objects from the last couple of centuries, and the latter displays rich textile traditions from all over India. Here is a piece of info that is put up at the textiles hall - at the time synthetic indigo was produced in Germany in 1897, India was exporting 8 million kg of the natural pigment....

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Sunday, January 17, 2010

National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, New Delhi


It's always a pleasure to discover and rediscover treasures from the past. And we did just that all day Sunday on a visit to the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum in New Delhi. Relics from all over the country, belonging to bygone eras are on display accompanied by unobtrusive, thoughtful descriptions. At the Village Complex are hand drawn carts, region-specific huts, and period utensils from across the country. An artisans enclosure houses stalls where you can see artisans at work, and buy their fare.

A bronze figure of Lord Krishna

A chariot

Metal art from Chhattisgarh - (this is half of a gate at the entry to the village complex)

An irrigation system

A kashmiri artisan working on a shawl, that will be completed in about a year's time.


If you ever find yourself touring in Delhi, do visit this museum (entry Rs 10/ for adults, Re 1/ for kids).
A similar concept can bee seen in South India, at Dakshinachitra, 35 km from Chennai. We were fortunate to visit there too, just a few days ago.
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