More Bricks

On the way to Modhera we stopped to photograph a group of Hanuman or Langur Monkeys we had spotted in the trees alongside the road.

In a field beyond we saw a family making bricks.

Whilst the process of making the bricks was essentially the same, the scale, pace of production and firing method was different to that which I had seen in Bangladesh.

 Making Bricks.

The method of firing the bricks was similar to the process employed to fire pots in Bangladesh where by a large stack of bricks is made and a fire built around and under them.

Pyramid building.

 

Sonargaon and Panam - Folk Art Festival

The museum is set within extensive grounds which are used to host an annual Folk Art Festival organised and supported by the museum foundation.

The festival includes an area which has a fairground feel, with entertaining rides and activities, stalls selling food and craft items, people picnicing and playing games.

Watch the children demonstrating how to throw a spinning top here: Spinning Top.

Musical instruments

Tucked away in a box in one of the shops were some clay dolls, like the ones we had seen in the museum.

There is another section of the fair which provides temporary accommodation and workspaces for crafts people to make, demonstrate and sell their crafts during the festival. It was great to see people working a range of materials and processes.

Fan makers.

Traditional wooden toy makers

(We had seen a large papier mache version of the toy horse in Shabag in the morning).

Paper mask makers

Strips of paper and glue are laid over clay models to give the shape, when dry, the paper is removed from the clay mould, trimmed and then painted. The characters are heros and villans from religious and folk tales.

There was a family, three generations, of 'Sholapith' craftworkers making moving toys, ornaments and flowers from shola - the same material that the Hindu wedding hats or coronets were made from which I had been drawing in the museum and seen in Old Dhaka.

I had seen some of the flowers before and had wondered what they were made from and how they had been made. The interest in the coronets made me want to learn more about how the material was worked.

Shola's scientific name is Aeschynomene Aspera, a herbaceous plant which grows in marshland.

Learn more about Sholapith here: Sholapith here: Sholapith and here: Sholapith.

The men had the material in its raw state, aswell as carefully sliced sheets which were made by cutting a continuous slice from around the stem until reaching the core.

Using few tools, other than two very sharp knifes, a range of skillful and carefully made cuts, combined with a knowledge of and sensitivity to the material resulted in the flowers 'appearing'.

There is something magical about the process. See the shola being worked and the flowers being made here: 'Sholapith' craftworker.

Another stall was selling baskets and bamboo items including a fan and a bamboo basket similar in shape to the metal ones in the museum.

There was also a blacksmith making the traditional knives used for preparing vegetables in Bangladesh.

Watch the Blacksmith working here: Sonargaon Blacksmith

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