Art of the East

Take the case of 35-year-old Yaomi Sasa, a potter from Manipur. The art of pottery practiced by the potters of Nungpi village in the Ukhrul district is the tribal coiled method. No wheel is used but coils rolled out of the black serpentine clay, a combination of crushed stone and clay. Yaomi’s 5,000-year-old art involves beating, casting, pressing and modelling shapes out of clay, mainly household items, further smoothed, dried and fired in an open fire. No glaze is used by potters like him but the items are rubbed after firing with a locally-made leaf called sahi kuhi so that they have a varnish-like surface on the black background.

Yaoni’s fingers shape out traditional items like the warrior’s pot or Durkha used in ancient times to consume wine at the time of departure for the war costing between Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000. And owing to the contemporary demand he has also made beautiful terracotta lamp base for as little as Rs 150.

Another artist dealing with a not very well-known traditional craft of the region is Martin from Nagaland. Teak-wood carving involved sculpting out forms out of teak-wood trunks and roots left to dry or rot by farmers who had decided to put their forest area into agricultural use. While the trees were cut and the timber sold at high prices, artists like Martin would then step in to clear the land of the roots and trunks. This process of making optimum use of the available natural resources has been on for centuries, informs Martin. A little varnish and a lot of imagination on his part can turn a simple root into an art object, for as little as Rs 600 up to Rs 12,000, a table stand, for instance, quite like the tea-bush table stands from Assam.