Clay Jottings - India 2006
Our trip was the usual format of a few days at a conference and then a week in Goa. The conference was in Lucknow for the third time and I was struck by the tremendous growth of the city. The main form of transport was still cycle rickshaw but the huge increase in vehicles had prompted a massive road building programme.
I was looking forward to seeing the potters who used to work on the roadside throwing little cups off momentum wheels and firing them in tiny brick kilns fuelled by rice husks. I have a wonderful water pot bought from one of these potters. Sadly the road widening scheme had swept away the potters and I could not find any at all. I was taken to a pottery shop but was told that all the pots were made a long way from the city. In the evening, at the conference dinner we were served soup in beautiful throw-away earthenware clay tumblers. You can guess who did not throw theirs away.
In Goa I visited my friend Luizinha in the pottery village behind our hotel. She was thrilled to hear that the article I have written about the village will be published. The only other potter in the village died this year whilst making a pot which leaves Luizinha the only potter in this once thriving community.
She was despondent as the last kiln firing had been a disaster and since there were now only her pots in the village kiln it represented months of work. A large pot had fallen into an air channel in the middle of the carefully stacked pile of pots and caused overheating and cracking of some pots and under firing of others. The whole open kiln site would have to be cleared and the firing repeated. She also has to look after her grandson which makes potting difficult.
To an outsider the little village looks idyllic with pigs and hens scratching around but all the young people have gone to work in the Gulf States and the village is dying.
