A fortnight long workshop on traditional tribal woodcraft and Dhokra art titled as ‘Katha-Srishti’, Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya commenced today at Tribal Habitat open air exhibition area of Sangrahalaya. In this workshop artists from Chhattisgarh and MP are participating.
The fortnight long workshop commenced with traditional rituals like breaking coconut and lighting the lamp. On this occasion, Director, IGRMS, Prof Sarit Kumar Chaudhuri, Joint Director, Dilip Singh and Prof KK Basa (Tagore Fellow) was present along with all IGRMS officials and huge number of visitors.
On this occasion, Pramod Kumar Sharma, Programme Coordinator requested the artists to materialize the craft from traditional method to various forms of intangible heritage existing in tribal tradition through wood craft and metal crafts.
Phool Singh Besra told about the Ghadhwa metal craft and said that Tribal metal-work is prepared using the lost-wax method.
This is an elaborate procedure of metal-casting involving several steps and raw materials.
A wax model of the desired figurine or statue is made and covered with clay.
The clay hardens to create a thick shell. Molten brass is poured on this clay-covered wax model.
This melts the wax, which escapes from holes made in the clay covering.
The clay is then broken and a metal figurine emerges. The artist then chisels the finer details on the figurine.
For making hollow objects, an additional step is the process of creating a clay core which is placed inside the wax model.
As the metal melts the wax, the clay core remains intact. This can later be extracted to create a hollow inside.
Wood carver Milan Korram told that Wood Idolizing of the tribal deities is an old tradition still continued. In the whole region of Bastar, wooden idols of Angdev, Paatdev, Bhimadev etc are made.