Pottery

KHAMIR Craft Resource Centre works with Kachchh potters to address the challenges facing the pottery sector.  Its efforts include assessing environmental concerns, exploring ways to engage Kumbhar youth in their traditional craft, improving baking technologies, and working to ensure product quality and innovative designs. It has initiated product development of pottery for interior design and architectural application. One of the products already on offer are a range of handmade embossed and hand painted tiles.

KHAMIR can facilitate architects, designers and buyers with studio, batch and scale production through infrastructure on its campus.

Introduction of Smoke Firing Technique  and new product developments:

It is felt that there is potential; to further integrate traditional, artisan craft based products and skills, into contemporary architectural building processes. Currently such resources are mostly used by a niche market, and often as token gestures, without much acknowledgment, of the profound wisdom inherited through generations of their development. Alternately where the mainstream has picked up on craft designs, it is typically limited to a product scale, confining the efforts of artisans to trinket production.

Therefore an effort is proposed to identify certain areas of traditional artisan and craft works, which can effectively flourish at an architectural scale, while accessible to a wider spectrum of prospective patrons. There are currently a number of existing techniques, which can be revived or renewed, with the simple influence of contemporary design inputs that respect the original qualities and properties of traditional art forms.

This can be done though a sustained series of workshops, training camps, organized classification, networking and eventual distribution.  Smoke Firing Technique workshop conducted by experts from Auroville with potter from Khavda & Lodai clusters has been the first step towards it.