Building boats - making toys

The exhibition finishes at the V&A Museum of Childhood this weekend and moves on to the Harley Gallery in Nottinghamshire. To mark the end of the London show the MoC has organised an event celebrating Asian culture:  'A glimpse of Asia'.

I have been asked for ideas for a one day collaborative project / installation inspired by the exhibition and MSSP project and suitable for working with all ages of visitors to the museum.
Two thoughts a came to mind, both similar in process: -  participants could personalise a standard design on flat sheet of card using coloured pencils, cut it out,learn to fold and form it to make a 3D object, add their own creation as part of a larger shared collaborative piece. They can also make another to take home.

Looking back through the sketchbooks my first thought was to make a wall panel of folded flowers - paper versions of the metal ones in the show and inspired by the textiles, garlands and offering flowers I had seen in India and Bangladesh, the block printing, the wall paintings and the project with the children at the school. Individuals could colour in their own flowers or add messages to the petals, then pin them together with others to make a vivid panel of colour and texture.

The second; a flotilla of boats to grow and float its winding way across the museum floor. 

Inspired by the boats in Bangladesh, the visit to the Boat museum, the toy 'put-put' boats in the markets in Bangladesh and India, the boat yards at Mandvi and the tin toys in the Museum of Childhood.

The boat idea won the day, so I have been designing and making simple card models of boats from a single A4 sheet, forms that can be personalised, easily cut out, scored, folded and assembled with minimal equipment and resources (so far I have one like the putt putt boats, another based on a bangladesh boat).

The A4 template sheets can be copied onto card.

I hope it will be a fun day and we will be able to make lots of them, it will be great to see them cover part of the floor and weave its way across one of the museum spaces.

The Kite Museum -Ahmedabad

Located in Sanskar Kendra, in the same building as the Ahmedabad City Museum (designed by Corbusier) the Kite Museum houses a wonderful collection of kites.

Established in 1985, the museum includes information about the history of kite making as well as some wonderful examples made from paper, nylon, cotton and bamboo.

The designs include imagery from Ahmedabad and India’s history as well as animal and geometric designs.

The intricacy of the designs is incredible, with each coloured piece of paper cut and stuck together to make up the kite. The contrast between the translucency, the delicateness of the paper and the tension created by the bamboo frame make them wonderful objects. A great platform for drawings and patterns of all kinds.

Every January the city of Ahmedabad has a festival of kites where people take to the roof tops of their houses to fly and fight their kites from dawn till dusk.

Flyers thread glass shards on the strings of their kites so they can do aerial battle with their neighbours and cut their strings. The sheer number of kites is said to be a wonderful sight.

The festival marks the days in the Hindu calendar when winter begins turning to summer, known as Makar Sankranti or Uttarayan.

Weeks before the festival craftsmen from places across India, including Jaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Agra, Mathura, Rampur, Bareilly and Lucknow, descend upon the city to make and sell their kites.

"After sunrise on the 14th of January, all rooftops in the city are crowded to capacity, as airbourne kites are pitted against one another. Cries of victory or defeat rend the air, and everyone enters the fray........The whole day slips by. Neither fatigue nor cut fingers, nor even the fading light of the setting sun deter the participants....".

'Under Ahmedabad Skies'. Kite Museum. Ahmedabad.

Watch 'Witness - Under the Ahmedabad Sky' - Part 1., Part 2., Part 3., Part 4.

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