Knitting together craft traditions

Tuck into India’s vast craft traditions over two weekends at the Dastkar Bengaluru Nature Bazaar

August 04, 2016 04:59 pm | Updated October 18, 2016 12:39 pm IST - Bengaluru

India in all its colours, through its myriad crafts - painted glass bottles

India in all its colours, through its myriad crafts - painted glass bottles

Get out your shopping bags, sharpen your shopping acumen, and support your country’s crafting and handmade traditions. Also, don’t stop there. Learn to create terracotta pottery, and learn to paint in the Madhubani style at workshops. The 12th edition of the Dastkar Bengaluru Nature Bazaar is here.

The bazaar brings together more than 100 craft groups, small producer groups from 20 states across India, including 25 new craft groups who will be exhibiting their products for the first time at this event.

This is where you can head to, to pick from a wide range of lifestyle accessories, jewellery, herbal beauty products, metal crafts, carved furniture and decorative products, pottery and ceramics, basketry and fibre crafts, leather products, traditional paintings, a variety of hand-woven, embroidered, block printed textiles, and more.

The bazaar is put together by Dastkar, a not-for-profit NGO established in 1981, that supports traditional Indian craftspeople, many of whom are women and work out of villages. The idea is to help craftspeople regain their place in the economic mainstream, in a country where craft is second only to agriculture in providing employment. At the bazaar, you will find Chaya Nisarga, for example, a Bengaluru-based group reinventing the lost craft of making decorative and utility products out of coconut shell and wood -- trays, table lamps, photo frames, walking sticks and more. Gramya T.S. works with 200 women from Chitradurga district in Karnataka, where they are reviving the use of banana fibre to create contemporary coasters, lamps, table mats, yoga mats, photo frames and window blinds. Often, such craft is the only employment opportunity for women.

The crafts you will find here range from Sabai grass mats and Sujini embroidery from east India; glass work, Soof embroidery, ceramics and clothes from west India, Tibetan paintings and wool, elephant dung products from north India, Khus products, weaves, murals and Lambani embroidery from south India, gourd carving and wrought iron decoratives from central India and so on.

Performance and workshops

On the second weekend of the bazaar (August 13 and 14) there will be a performance of “Tribal Dances of Jharkhand”.

Don’t just shop. Learn something of your country’s craft. Dastkar is organising craft workshops in Patachitra painting (of Odisha), terracotta pottery, clay modelling and Madhubani painting. The workshops are spread across the two weekends, between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.

The bazaar is being held between August 6 and 15 at Manpho Convention Centre, Veerannapalya, Nagwara Ring road, opposite BEL Corporate Office, 11a.m. to 8p.m. Entry fee is Rs. 40.

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