The Utensil Museum, Ahmedabad

In Ahmedabad there is a well know restaurant called 'Vishala' which celebrates village life. It’s a themed restaurant with both exceptional Gujarati food and service. The village experience extends to live music, dance and puppet shows.…..

Within the restaurant grounds is a space that is a metalsmiths delight…. ‘VECHAAR’ or the ‘The Utensil Museum’, a large collection of clay, wood, bone and metal artefacts, vessels and containers of infinite variety. Items such as water pitchers, milk containers, oil burners, betel nut cutters are grouped together in sections based upon where they were made, their function or use.

The objects originate from across India, Pakistan, and the countries which cover the land towards and around the Aral sea.

Most of the metal vessels are spun, raised, cast or fabricated and are made from brass, copper or bell metal / non-ferrous alloys. The collection is 'salvaged', the owner and creator saving the examples of skill and craftsmanship from being 'recycled' as scrap. The objects have wonderful silhouettes and proportions

All manner of forms, elegant outlines, sprouts and handles exist here, some clearly showing the marks of their making, others richly decorated, chased and ‘repoussed’ with great skill. The collection includes spouted 'Lota', used for ritual cleansing before prayer.

The range of scale of the metalwork is stunning, from the intimate, small holy jugs for performing ‘puja,’ to giant pitchers and dowry chests (some between 60cm and 120cm in diameter). The latter with their three legs and beautiful domed lids.

The three legged dowry chests are a speciality of the Kathi community of Saurashtra, Gujarat. The box is given at the time of a marriage and is used for storing clothes and jewellery.

There are water vessels of every description with their tight necks, wide bodies and fluid lines; the shapes have developed over time and they are designed to limit spills and to ease their handling and use including carrying on the hip or the head.

A base of a 'Hukka' Made from cast brass the piece comes from Uttah Pradesh. The engraved design is influenced by the Mughal style.A lantern.

Bell.Temple oil lamp.Giant iron pots (some with riveted plates).

Another visit to the museum

I visitedt the Museum to see if things were progressing with the permit that would allow me to draw objects in the collection.

I was pleased to learn that I would be able to photograph some of the pieces which I was interested in, but it had to happen there and then. It would be quicker for the museum if I took photos.... otherwise someone would need to be with me and keep a record of what I drew.

We set off around the Museum, I was limited to objects within agreed departments and needed to be escorted by 4 staff who collectively noted the accession numbers of the pieces I photographed.

I think it was difficult for the museum staff to understand the connections I saw between the pieces and why I wanted to record them. The culture of using museum collections as a resource for all, to educate, inform and inspire is very different here in Bangladesh compared to the UK. The practice of artists and designers sourcing inspiration, finding solutions to design problems, observing different approaches to material manipulation and learning from historic collections didnt appear to be common practice. I think there may also be concerns about cultural appropriation and preservation. Bangladesh feels very much a 'new' nation, defining its modern cultural identity in the world and at the same time, understandably, being very protective and proud of the rich history and traditions of the people and the region. Relatively recent history had seen, what some might view as, an attempt to try to eradicate and destroy a large part of that cultural knowledge.

Some of the curators I met talked about the books they had written and the research they had undertaken about their specialist subject and the museums collections.

I wondered what it would be like to see a Big Draw project take place here and what the museum and the public might make of it, to explore different ways for the public to engage in their heritage through drawing. I wondered what the curators might think if they saw and took part in a Big Draw project in a museum in the UK. I wondered what they might think of the education programes that take place in UK museums and some of the projects I have been involved in with both museums and heritage sites.

Some 30 or so minutes later and with all the forms and numbers completed, I had a record of some of the objects I had seen and which I thought were wonderful, either for their craftsmanship, their forms and surfaces, the inventiveness, resourcefulness, the way they were made, the way in which the material had been worked or the mysteries and stories they prompted in my mind.

For me one of the most stunning objects was a fan, woven like the bamboo ones I had seen and brought in the village and markets, instead this one was made from silver. (approximately 40 cm tall).

I havent seen anything like this before and was intrigued by the application of a technique normally used for another material being translated into metal. I wondered why this object had been made; it was possibly a high status object, because of the material and the craftsmanship, yet it had retained so much of its everyday design; including the overall format, the scale, the weave, the supporting wires across the middle, the fringe around the disc.

There were other metal objects that caught my attention for their forms and the processesss used to construct them but also because they occupied a similar cultural ground.

Woven brass baskets: Again using weaving techniques normally associated with bamboo, these baskets are identical in shapes to ones normally made from the cheaper, local, bamboo. They are designed and used to wash fish, the open weave at the bottom allowing water to move freely. Why make them in brass? show ?status? durability? To have obtained the brass, cast, stretched, rolled it to make the lengths and then to weave it, would have taken considerable time and effort. why?

The shift in form from square to round, the change in the weave, the tension in the surface, the pulling in of the sides on the lower one, the bulk and rhythm of the strips swirling together to form the rim, the finer wire holding it all in place, were all beautiful details.

There were lots of other baskets in the collection, humble utilitarian objects made from cheap local materials, stunningly and inventively crafted, designed to do a job and now resting in a cabinet in a museum.

Tight flowing winnowing baskets for sifting rice with their fluid lines and busy surfaces, different scales of line and material for different parts of the object.

Fishing scoops, again using different gauges of material to produce stunningly clear forms so complex you could look at them for ages trying to understand the form, the flow of the lines, the structure and how they were made. I try to imagine the story of how and where they might have been used.

Other bulky forms made up from fine lines of reed and grass, The designs demonstrating an understanding and observation of the prey and how it moves and operates.Bamboo again split and spread out to create fluid eel trap scoops.
I'm concious that there is a metal and construction bias to my photos, stunning anklets from different parts of Bangladesh associated with different tribal groups. Made from repeated cast components the look like fruits, the mass forming an overal surface.
A beautiful boat, actually commissioned by museum and built within the gallery, made using metal staples like the ones we saw in the models at the boat museum earlier in the month.I liked the colours and the painting as well as the way the planks tapered and fitted together.

The fluid and tapering form was beautiful too.
What a visual feast!, although I miss the woven ivory mat and the stunning forms of the stone and wood carving!

Sonargaon and Panam - The Folk Art Museum Collection

The museum houses a collection of artifacts from all over Bangladesh, representing the many cultural groups that exist across the country and exhibiting the skill and expertise of the nations artists and craftspeople. The main objectives of the museums foundation are to collect, preserve, display, research and revitalise the traditional folk arts and craft of Bangladesh. Galleries include examples of: Bamboo/ cane craft, Shital patti crafts, brass and bell metal crafts, agricultural and iron artefacts, musical instruments, tribal jewellery, models of indigenous boats, scroll paintings, masks and wooden crafts.

I particularly liked the following artefacts in the collection:

The carved wooden religious panels, influenced by Indonesian art and with decorative borders.

The examples of 'Patachitra', a folk art of painting on scrolls of paper or cloth using both mineral and vegetable pigments. The scrolls can be over 5 metres long and are sometimes between 1-2 metres wide. The 'Patachitra' are a form of rural entertainment and education. The 'Patua' or scroll painters travel from village to village singing and narrating the stories depicted on the scrolls, rolling through the images as they sing. The stories relate to religious scenes from both Hindu and Muslim faiths including tales of Kalu Gazi- a legendary muslim saint, Rama and Krishna. Some of the Patua's have both Hindu and Muslim names, adopting the appropriate name and stories according to the religious focus of the settlements they visit.

A series of boat models recording the different shapes and forms in use across Bangladesh. Beautiful shapes.

A collection of indigenous musical instruments. Forms reminiscient of African masks with ornately carved headstocks and lacquered bamboo volumes.

The fishing baskets. I liked the fluid lines and forms.

I liked the immediacy of the small, hand sized, dolls and pull along childrens toys made from clay.

I liked the beautiful quality of line and colours in the collection of painted plates.

Clay biscuit molds that looked like wood cuts.A lovely proportioned thrown clay strainer,

and a brass metal one too.

The metal galleries were really exciting, squeezed away behind glass in wall mounted display cases there were more of the woven metal baskets, like the one that I had seen in the national museum.

I liked the top of it, how all the strips come together in a dense swirling rim and the use of finer wire stitched around to hold them.

I was intrigued by their purpose and function, apparently they were used for cleaning fish. Its understandable that the brass is a duarble material for such a job. The method of construction and style is based upon bamboo which they would have originally been made from, but the bamboo strips would still have lasted a long time and been durable too. The only conclusion that I can draw for the use of metals in these designs is durability, status or some medicinal(the metal being cool to lie on or store things in) or ceremonial role. The time spent refining, casting and working the brass to make the strips, then to weave the material would have been very costly and not in keeping with the very utilitarian nature of the objects and their designs.

There was many more examples of woven metal strips including bowls, winnowing baskets and sieves made from strip metal. I may have been that a group of craftspeople experimented and started making these for a very specific market, adapting their skills to different, available materials. Most were made in the 19th - 20th Century and in specific areas.

A fan, not as fine as the one in the National museum, but the pattern created by the weave is still very beautiful.

there were also bowls woven from wire.

One of my favorite objects was an amazing mat( app1.5m x 2.5m), made from woven metal and patinated to give patches of different colours.

There were woven mats made from reed too with a wonderful elephant design.

and a panel made from bamboo strips, every piece named.

Learn more about bamboo and cane work here: Cane and Bamboo Crafts of Bangladesh