One-day toy-making workshop held at Saptaparini
Hyderabad: Artistes’ imagination goes beyond the boundaries of the real world. But, unfortunately, not many seem willing/able to continue pursuing their artistic endeavours, as it doesn’t fetch good income. Owing to less returns on their investment, a lot of artisans and craftsmen changed their profession and moved to different places. The art of making Kondapally […]
Hyderabad: Artistes’ imagination goes beyond the boundaries of the real world. But, unfortunately, not many seem willing/able to continue pursuing their artistic endeavours, as it doesn’t fetch good income. Owing to less returns on their investment, a lot of artisans and craftsmen changed their profession and moved to different places.
The art of making Kondapally dolls is being continued by just a few families now. To ensure that the art doesn’t die, Abhihaara Social Enterprise picked a few people from Kondapally to encourage their craftsmanship. The organisation has conducted a one-day workshop for Kondapally artisans and also put up a ‘bommala koluvu’ at Saptaparni, Road No 8, Banjara Hills today from 11 am till 6 pm.
This is part of the capacity-building initiative that Abhihaara has taken up in partnership with IASCC, HFH, and Saptaparni. The skill-building programme for 10 women began on December 9, 2021, at Kondapally in Andhra Pradesh.
This workshop helps aspirant craftspeople and those interested in learning the art to meet and interact with some of the artisans wherein the learners/visitors are encouraged to give valuable inputs and to customise their orders. There is also a display and sale of natural dyed handmade toys.
The toy-makers migrated from Rajasthan around the 16th century, bringing their toy-making craft to Kondapally. “Earlier, people used to make toys with cow dung and add colours but later they started experimenting with wood. The toys used to be sold at the village santhas/melas,” shares Kotayya Chary who has been training artistes for many years now.
The art has been recognised by the government in 1936, he shares and adds, “Our great grandfathers have been into this art, and now my two brothers and I are carrying it on. I just don’t want the art to die so I have trained my son so that the art continues.”
On display at Saptaparni are Krishna-Gopika sets, village set, marriage set, Dasavatharam and more, which are bound to attract craft lovers. Wood is collected from the village and chopped into pieces, and then the artisans start working on dolls for a week to complete one big set. “It takes six months to learn this art; and one needs a lot of patience and tremendous focus while working on this craft because it’s a bit risky while chopping the wood; hands may get cut if we are negligent even for a second,” says an artisan.
“We have been working to help the artistes for the past two years as they don’t have any idea about how to promote their art. There are few people left who know this art of toy-making; we just want to encourage all those artistes from Kondapally to show our culture and art to the world. The income in this field is really less which made many of artisans move to different professions but now we are focussing on homemakers who could make toys in their leisure time and also bring in additional income into their family,” concludes Sudha Mullapudi, co-founder of Abhihaara Social Enterprise.
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