India Future of Change

Some of the MS:SP Fellowship photos from India have been included in the 'India Future of Change' photographic competition.

You can see them on the flicker site here: India Future of Change.

Shiny Metal

I had seen more of the water vessels around the old town, shiny brass and copper. I decided to revisit the coppersmiths I had met earlier in the month, I wanted to see more of what they did and observe their techniques in more detail. There was a big language barrier but it was a pleasure to sit and watch the skill and directness of their work, the scale of what they make.

Once constructed the vessels are cleaned, under the board a large pit filled with sulphuric pickle is used to clean the oxide from the pots.

A combination of pumice and diluted cow excrement is used to clean the pots and give them a surface ready for planishing.

 When cleaned, the pots are then taken across to another workshop to be planished, to work harden the copper and texture the surface.

Elephants

Across the river from the City Museum and the Tagore Memorial Hall is an area known as Jamalpur, its close to the old calico mills and there are large fruit and flower markets here which I had passed through many times before in a rickshaw.

I decided to walk back to Arts Reverie from the museum over Sandar Bridge and through Jamalpur. I had been told the elephants which I had seen around the city, crossing Ellis Bridge, eating greens in Manek Chowk, and collecting alms in Gandhi Road were housed in this area, near the Jagdush Mandir, and I thought I would take a closer look on my route back to Dhal ne Pol.

I had once seen an exhibition of Henry Moores drawings of an elephants skull at the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne and been struck both by the scale and the complexity of the form of the skull.

The elephants were trully amazing..... and inquisitive! I was great to be so close to such wonderful and huge beasts. Many were old, with pigment loss on their trunks.

It was the end of the day and they were being settled down for the night, their 'saddles' were stacked against the wall of a building.

On the way home I passed Jamalpur Gate or 'Darwaja', one of the many gates which once allowed passage beyond the walled city.

The walls of the city, built in the late 1400's, have now all but disappeared. Those gates which remain are now often small islands of calmness and history caught in the middle of the busy traffic which passes around the ring road to the city. Its interesting that both Dhaka and Ahmedabad have growing voices calling for the protection of their architectural heritage. The Pols and Haveli's in Ahmedabad and the colonial houses and city gateways in Old Dhaka.

Metal Detecting

I spent some time wandering around the old city looking at the metal wares.

The scale and inventiveness of some of the work is impressive.

I came across a workshop making large copper water vessels. In this area of the city many of the pols contain metals  workshops.

This workshop is set up just to make vessels. Metal stakes were set in the ground and used for forming the sheet metal.

The vessels are given as gifts at weddings, a symbol of a wish for a fruitful and healthy life.The vessels are made in a series of different sizes which stack on top of each other.

The vessels make use of small tags to hold the sheets in place whilst soldering.

Edges are rolled on a stake set in the floor

I didn't have a translator with me at the time I visited the coppersmiths, so I am not completely sure which materials are used for the soldering. At first the process looks to make use of tin but the temperatures used and the yellow of the finished seams suggests that the paste applied to the tagged joints includes fine grains of metal including brass, a flux, dissolved in the liquid, as well as other metals to help reduce the melting temperature and oxidisation - (the brass powder is possibly the waste material or filings from another workshop making brass wares nearby).

The granular suspension is applied to the tagged joints then sprinkled with a white powder which could be a salt or possibly silica (white sand) which acts as an additional flux.

Brazing seems more likely considering the hammer work that the vessels receive both within this workshop (in flattening the seams and evening out the joints) and the next, where the vessels are hammered both to work harden the panels and create decorative surfaces.

The pieces are soldered on coke hearths

Whilst one piece is being pre heated to dry out the flux another is being prepared. There is no detailed cleaning up of the joints prior to braising.

Around the corner was another workshop producing the same metal vessels.