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Excerpts from a diary of a journey, 3pm daily |
Irini Papadimitriou
UnBox Caravan - Day 2
It’s day 2 at UnBox Caravan and I still haven’t had a chance to explore the city, but we are about to join the students in small groups and head out to meet makers and explore some of the beautiful markets.
A former NID student has made a map showing the incredibly rich range of skills, materials and makers in and around Ahmedabad. From textiles, metalwork, ceramics, digital manufacturing to printing, glass
and leather, the people of Ahmedabad can make virtually everything. It’s extraordinary! I feel quite sad that this is lost in many countries across the world.
So for the rest of the day, I join Rachel Rayns and two students from NID, and we set out to explore an electronics market, an area with leather businesses and artisans and a colourful textiles market.
I soon realise that these are more streets packed with shops, sellers and makers rather than a covered market that I expected to find, so I feel a bit lost. There are so many sellers and makers, we don’t know where to start. And it’s very busy and noisy, but also incredibly fascinating. We start talking to some people working with electronics, and soon realise they can repair and make anything. The street feels like a production chain, so you can have things made as you go from one place to the other. It’s pretty much the same with leather and other materials. I was hoping to see people making things today, but apart from the long line of repairers at the electronics markets, everywhere else we go it’s mainly sellers. So, no woodblock printing today, but we find some beautiful Ikat textiles and prints instead.
UnBox Caravan - Day 7
Tanishka Kachru from NID’s Exhibition Design faculty, has kindly offered to take us to the Sabarmati Riverfront Market, which takes place every Sunday. After a couple of days in and out of the hotel - well, mainly in, after being a bit adventurous with food - it feels so exciting to get out to the streets again and explore the city.
The Sabarmati Sunday Market is an open air market on the Riverfront, a recent and huge development along the banks of Sabarmati river, which apparently was quite a challenging project due to flooding concerns and of course the displacement of slum dwellers, who lived along the river banks.
The market covers a big area and it’s arranged with platforms for the vendors, but also sitting and playing areas. As every market, to a visitor or outsider like me, it looks completely chaotic, but also super exciting with thousands of objects, colours, smells and obviously noise. There is a huge range of stuff, knick-knacks, antiques, house tools, clothes, furniture, and according to Tanishka also animals, although we don’t see any animal sellers today. Like in other markets and areas in the city, here also you find a big supply of both materials and skills, and many sellers are makers. In fact we spot some of them as well as some repairers.
We also get a chance to meet the team running the market, who explains more about the way it works, how sellers register for stalls and how much the market has grown in the last couple of years.
UnBox Caravan - Day 8
Today, I join Jayne and Sean, who are heading back to Sarkhej, a pottery village, for the third time. I have seen some of the wonderful and intricate incense pots that they brought back previously, so I jump at the chance to visit.
It’s a slightly longer journey and the beeping and noises from horns are coming from every angle. Plus it’s hot and dusty. It feels a bit surreal to be on a rickshaw on such a busy road, and with cars coming from every direction, but every journey in Ahmedabad is fascinating. The streets are where all the action happens. There are slums, sellers, recyclers, animals, kids running around, people eating and sleeping, but also a lot of materials, trash and smog.
But half an hour later we arrive in Sarkhej and I immediately know we are out of Ahmedabad and the madness of its streets. We walk into the courtyard of a house and at the entrance there is a big outdoor kiln. The kiln is covered by hundreds of small, delicate cups, which I guess will be fired later in the day. Sarkhej is an amazing place. Everyone here makes pottery. It’s like walking into a huge ceramics studio, only these are people’s homes and working places too. They are very excited to see Jayne and Sean again and they are incredibly generous and welcoming. They are so proud of their work and they want to share with us the process.
Sean is very excited to see the potter’s wheel, so he can’t resist jumping in and making some cups too. We can’t speak a word in Gujarati and they hardly speak any English, but there is a common language, pottery making. Later in the day we get invited to a few more houses and studios and see more people at work. We leave with a few small pots, some of which, Sean and Jayne will use later to remix in with their work. The result is amazing!
It’s been a very long time since I made something. It was many years ago, while I was studying in Italy for an art conservation degree where I worked with wood carving, gilding and medieval and renaissance painting techniques. But, this was a long time ago, and even though I have been working closely with artists, designers and makers and understand a lot about their processes, it has mainly been from a distance, without making anything myself. So the opportunity to not only meet makers here, but also be able to make things, surrounded by so many extraordinary skilled people, has been an amazing part of this journey.
UnBox Caravan - Day 9
Many of the UnBox participants have been creating things all these days, from wood work to metal work, leather objects, ceramics, electronics and more. It’s been a very long time since I made something. It was many years ago, while I was studying in Italy for an art conservation degree where I worked with wood carving, gilding and medieval and renaissance painting techniques. But, this was a long time ago, and even though I have been working closely with artists, designers and makers and understand a lot about their processes, it has mainly been from a distance, without
making anything myself. So the opportunity to not only meet makers here, but also be able to make things, surrounded by so many extraordinary skilled people, has been an amazing part of this journey.
I remember how exciting it was to see an object taking shape and life from materials, and although it was almost always a very imperfect object, I still loved the result and the process.
I just met a lovely group of people running a family leather business in the old city centre. It was again thanks to Jayne that I ended up there, as she was due to pick up a leather bag she designed and made with them a few days earlier. I was actually hoping to persuade them to try making a pair of sandals, but I didn’t have high hopes as they seemed quite busy. I also happened to wear a pair of sandals I got in Greece a few years back. They were made by one of the oldest sandal makers in Athens, so it’s a traditional design. The folks of Laxmi Leather Arts (as the business is called) were very curious about my Greek sandals, so we started chatting about sandal-making in both countries.
I then decided to draw a basic design of sandals, and check if they would be willing to make them. It was simply made of two wide strips of leather at the front creating a cross design, with a traditional stitching at the borders. Although they looked a bit hesitant at the beginning, over a cup of chai, they started asking me about where the stitching would go, the leather strips at the top and materials; yes, the drawing was so bad, they couldn’t figure it from that! So we slowly started looking at different materials, types of leather that could be used and colours. Prototyping and fitting came next, trying out some samples for the top, the leather width, and holes for the stitches. So, in a few hours, we ended up with an amazing pair of sandals, made from scratch, layer after layer. It might not be the most brilliant design in the world, but it is such an incredible experience to make something that we usually take for granted and not think how much time, labour, skill and team work it takes. I thought this was an amazing exchange and judging from how happy they were with the results, showing them off to other people, I think they certainly enjoyed this process too.