Madhubani Art

The Madhubani meta-cluster districts of Madhubani, Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur lie upon the ancient land of Mithila famed for its cultural heritage, finding its origins in the Ramayana. It is believed that on the occasion of his daughter's wedding, Janaka; the ruler of Mithila asked his kinfolk to decorate the floors and walls of the kingdom with painting and thus Madhubani originated. True to their land, the people in this region continue to maintain a unique sense of culture and art.

Surrounded by the Himalayas on the north and the Ganga's water-network in the other three directions, it is believed that Madhubani's geographical seclusion aids the flourishment of this unique cultural mileu. Headed by the conservative Maithil Brahmins, this region is home to a strict caste discipline which seems to dictate all aspects of socio-cultural life, including its rich craft heritage.

Madhubani artist at work

 

 

Mithila's crafts exist within a delicate balance of all these factors, coupled with gender
roles - it has been observed that Madhubani paintings are only done by women; murals painted by Dushads (those on the lower boundaries of castes) depict the harsh realities of social divide.


Madhubani artist at work

Madhubani seems to draw its main influence from Hindu rituals, mythical figures, gods and goddesses. The artists also draw symbols from their natural surroundings which abound in aquatic flora and fauna. These natural motifs and linked with symbolic meanings - the turtle is a symbol of Vishnu, the Snake is perceived as the guardian of the underworld, and the lotus and bamboo symbolize female and male sexuality respectively. Ritual paintings accompany auspicious occasions and find their way on the walls of people's homes when newly weds arrive, or on the birth of a child.



Madhubani artist at work

                                            
Madhubani paintings have been prevalent in three forms, Aripona or floor art; Bhitti Chitra or wall paintings and Godana meaning tattoos. Natural colors of rice paste, turmeric and sindoor are traditionally used by the women to create such paintings. Wall paintings made by upper caste Brahmin women derive their themes from mainstream Hindu worship, whereas the mud murals made by the Dushads revolve around their epic, Mahagatha, and its protagonist, Raja Sailesh.

Though it is rather well known today, Madhubani was originally discovered by co incidence. Government officials touring the region in 1966 due to an ongoing drought discovered this art form and realizing its true potential, urged the women to start painting on paper for commercial purposes.That was the time when Madhubani broke free from its ritualistic ties and truly blossomed as an art form.

Most commonly sold as paintings on paper and saris, the commercialization of this art has come to empower the women of this region, otherwise plagued with gender differences and a strong patriarchy.

We at The Color Caravan have tried to further the scope of this art-form by partnering with individual artists and self-help groups co-creating one of a kind Madhubani crafts, hoping to reach more people and creating awareness.

Following are some of the products that we've created with our partner artists over last 2.5 years.

 

 

 

 

 

Check out some of our Madhubani art products currently available at our eStore.

(The Color Caravan owns the copyright for all the photographs in this post. Cannot be used in any form without permission.)

Bibliography: Handmade in India
 

The Color Caravan eStore

 

With a lot of unrestrained bubbling excitement, we are happy to announce the launch of  The Color Caravan eStore :

http://thecolorcaravan.com/

Yes! We know it has taken forever but it is FINALLY up & running. Yay!

This means buying your favorite 'The Color Caravan' products will be much more easier now :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are still fine-tuning the content on the store but please do have a look &  feel free to share your feedback.

 

- We are currently shipping only within India.

- Shipping is FREE for all orders above Rs.2000. For orders below that, we charge a flat
  Rs.100 shipping fee.
- Our Payment Options include: Online Transfer, Credit Card, Debit Card using Net
  Banking.
- We also offer Cash Before Delivery to selected cities in India via GharPay- a “doorstep 
  cash payment network”.

 

Process for Cash 'Before' Delivery:

1.Customer selects GharPay as the mode of payment during checkout.

2.Customer will receive a call within 24 hours of placing the order to confirm the order 
   and other details.

3.Gharpay agent will visit the customer's location and pick up the cash as per the order.

4.Once the cash has been picked up, The Color Caravan will ship the order within 24 hrs.

5. GharPay - Cash before Delivery is not available on Sundays and national holidays.

6. All other policies apply as normal.

 

 

Also, in order to receive timely updates about our latest products & upcoming collections, please Signup for The Color Caravan newsletter here or through the sign up widget on our eStore. Don't worry, we won't spam. Promise :)

 

You've supported us, encouraged us, guided us & made us happy & confident through out the last 2.5 years and we hope you will continue to do so.

Please help us spread the word by sharing the eStore link. http://thecolorcaravan.com/

 with your friends & family. Please. :)

Thank you SO much.

 

Cheers!

A very excited team at The Color Caravan  :)

Artist Talkies: Madhubani Artist: Shabnam Kumari aka Mini

This post is dedicated to our partner artist who evokes beauty in her works on Madhubani Art. Shabnam Kumari or Mini as she is fondly called is from a small village called Laxmipur in Madhubani district, Bihar. She comes from a family of women who have been trained in this artistic profession of making Mithila paintings for years now. Her interest was nurtured by her amma (mother) Meena Devi, a Madhubani artist. However, Mini believes that her greatest inspiration has been her nani (maternal grand-mother), Mahasundari Devi, a famous madhubani artist and winner of some very prestigious awards like National Award, Nagarjuna Award and Padma Shree. Her grand-mother nurtured the art till Mini picked it up on her own.  

Shabnam Kumari, OUR darling 'Mini'

Mini has been painting since her childhood but she picked up the market aspect of her paintings only in Delhi in 2001. She reminisces during our conversation about how she realized her potential to commercially paint in the Mithila form when she was accompanying her sister, Pushpa Kumari for an event at Pragati Maidan in 2001. A lady at the event realized her potential and offered her the opportunity to paint; And fearless as she is, she took up the offer to craft her own history (her sister was never in on this until the very end!)

                Madhubani Coasters The Color Caravan co-created with Subhnam Kumari.

She married soon after in 2004 and went to Guwahati with her husband. Even though she wished to further her craft there, opportunities never came her way and she went back to a life of family and motherhood with her two kids. Ever since then, she has returned ambitious and has been in a village near Delhi NCR for the past two years. But she now works whenever work comes her way because of her kids. She tells us that she even though she likes being a mother, she misses that pleasure that work accords her. She worries that if work doesn't keep coming her way, she'll soon have to return to Guwahati to her husband.

    Madhubani Coasters

Childhood stories of her association with Madhubani paintings invoke a lot of nostalgia in her. To her, her proudest moment was when she got the opportunity to go to Japan. To her it all began in class 8th, with a Fine Art competition based on Flowers and Leaves or as she calls it - phool patti. A gentleman called Hashigawa came, made his request of paintings that were personally done by the students. Mini rose to the occasion, did a fine painting based on the Goddess Saraswati. This impressed the gentleman so much that he sponsored her trip to Japan soonafter.

This story also corresponds to the story of how she started selling greeting cards to earn money. As kids, one used to gift cards to each other's friends. When her grandmother, Mahasundari Devi, heard of it, she encouraged her granddaughter to sell greeting cards to earn money. This was her first attempt at earning money of her own. But mostly, she realised that her talents in the field of Madhubani paintings could fetch her a unlikely livelihood in the future. 

                                                              Are they not gorgeous?

During our conversation, one story leads to another and Mini can't seem to hold back the stories. She talks about her stint as a college student at Mithila University in Bihar. She remembers going for a Rangoli competition back in those days assuming it were a Mithila painting competition. The first attempt was not a fruitful one as she returned empty handed. But this prompted her to prepare for the competiton the next time.  When she was asked to attend the competition again, she went on to becomimg university first in the field of arts.

She also remembers going to Vardhman University's competition around 1995-97. She recounts how she lost the competition, also losing out on putting the Mithila University on the forefront of arts simply because her skirt ended up ruffling her painting on completion. BHU went on to win the first position she recalls with a sigh.

                                                    " Life is art. Paint your dreams."

                     

For her, art is a constantly evolving process. She remembers how Jyoti Basu made her realize this.  Once during a visit to Calcutta she recalls how he forced her to think of the human effort that is central to such works. He'd ask her whether she could draw from her left hand. She in her innocent vehemence, drew something with her left hand. Which again brought further questioning from Jyoti Basu; he asked her why she began her paintings by starting from the head of the painted subject instead of the toe? This prompted her to draw another painting proving that she could draw starting from the toes. She even drew from the left and right hand to prove how good she was with Mithila paintings.

                   Mini flaunting her Madhubani slippers that she painted for herself.

She is proud of her daughter similarly for garnering an affection for Mithila drawings. Her daughter, she tells us, has been garnering accolades for her drawings and paintings in school. But she prefers that her daughter studies now than concentrate on a lost art.

                                          Her million dollar smile and eyes say it all.

Our conversation ebbs out with one last story of her youth wherein she exercised independence and chose a path less followed. She tried out as a Radio Presenter for a few months.  All she did was script a few stories, went to the radio station and impressed them enough with her stories that she ended up working as a presenter at the station. To her that incident is a crucial piece of history that she carries along with her today.

We are blessed to be working with a wonderful artist like Shabnam Kumari. Her child-like enthusiasm, warm smile, passion for Madhubani painting makes her an asset to the organisation. But mostly, The Color Caravan realizes its family of artists who bring their history into their art and transform us completely.

(The Color Caravan owns the copyright for all the photographs in this post. Cannot be used in any form without permission.)

The Art of making Kites - A workshop

Delhi has quite the history with kites. Being a kid in the streets of Delhi, you realize the tradition of flying kites on India's Independence Day celebrations in August every year. So how could we miss out on this tradition while many a rooftops were abuzz with energy for the 'pench larana'!

So to fulfill our part in this tradition, we chose August 13^th as the day for an amazing and artsy kite-making workshop for kids!

                                                                    
Early in the morning The Color Caravan set out with Eureka! Bookstore with many enthusiastic kids and our amazing kite-makers Touseef Miya and Shahvez from Rampur in tow for the workshop at Bumble Bees and what a fun-filled day it was! Colorful papers, scissors, sticks; everything was flying around inside the bookstore weaving magic. 

It was simply amazing how the kids put in all their creative powers into making these kites, getting right away into the business of getting dirty with the glue and colours. Greens and blues and reds, it was as if the books themselves had come to life! Any inhibitions that the kids felt just melted away as the hours passed away in the making of the kites.

But it were the kite-makers who stole the show for us that day. Our Kite-Masters enthralled the children with the retelling of the history of kites. For stories and theories suggest that China was home to the birth of kites while many others believe that Gengis Khan and his Mongolian soldiers brought kites during their invasions. But what is more intriguing is the history of our kite-makers themselves. They are the descendants of the many generations of Rohillas from Rampur, a family intensely involved in the craft of kite-making. They came to India around 1680 from the mountains of Afghanistan, settling down in the Terai region of India. Their stories are vivid, just like the kites that the children had created. 

We signed off the day with many a young happy faces with their creations in tow! These kites are meant to be treasured for their memories. 

For more picture of the kite making workshop click here

(The Color Caravan owns the copyright for all the photographs in this post. Cannot be used in any form without permission.)

A BIG Leap

It's been a month since we relocated to Lucknow City - cultural and artistic capital of North India.

The reason why we have been out of action is...

Yes! We've been busy setting up our new office cum warehouse cum art & design studio :)

Do you like the first look?? Do tell us.

More pictures coming soon :)

A Brush With Gond Art

Sometimes things turn out way different from what was originally planned and sometimes these plans are better than what was originally envisaged. On 28th April, The Color Caravan along with Eureka Bookstore organized its first workshop ever: a Gond painting workshop for children with Gond artist Mangru Uike at Bumble Bees in New Delhi.

Our initial plan was to introduce the Gond painting workshop with the artist, Mr. Heerman Urweti. We got amazing response from people the moment the event was announced on our Facebook page, with bookings getting over within 2 days of the announcement. This moment was very special to us; we realized that members of The Color Caravan family were actually interested in learning folk art.

But our event hit an impasse in the form of some sad news regarding Heerman’s family. He called to tell us that he would have to miss out the workshop because his badi mummy had passed away. We were saddened by this news because we felt for Heerman and his family. But we were also in a bad place because we didn’t want to cancel our first ever workshop.

And that’s when our good friend, mentor and craft promoter, Minhaaz Majumdar came to our rescue! It was through her we were immediately able to replace Mr. Heerman with one of her Gond artists, Mangru Uike. But before we could give the green signal to our event we had to call up the parents of our young workshop participants to seek permission for the workshop with Mangru Uike and not Heerman as was originally planned. And amazing as our TCC family is, they all agreed to have Mangru Uike lead the workshop for us. So there we had Mangru Uike hopping onto the next train to Delhi to conduct the workshop the next morning itself.

We had about 25 young participants under our hat and what a fun-filled day it was with them! Mangru Uike brought the inner genius out of all our budding artists! Every kid was busy with their pencils and colors, simply drawing away. The kids just let their imagination run amok in those few hours of drawing. And not only that, Mangru made it awesome by showing them how to paint in the Gond mode. Some people initially floundered but eventually picked up the pace thanks to our amazing artist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To deviate from the topic a bit, we are sure that our readers would be interested to know a little bit about the history of Gond art. Essentially, Gond tribal community is one of Madhya Pradesh’s largest indigenous communities whose artistic expression lies in deriving a meaning to life while attempting to record their local history. These drawings are not only based on the local folklore but also are intimately derived from images found in one’s daily life. The community also celebrates nature in its craft which can be seen in their celebration of forests and agriculture. But the predominant theme in these paintings have been that of mythical beasts apart from the detailing that is done through the use of flora and fauna, as Mangru Uike showed us.

In the end, we were enervated, but our creative abilities were never exhausted. The workshop was such a massive success that we are now inspired to conduct many more workshops for our TCC family! A hearty thanks to all those who came!
P.S. A special mention to Shreya Lahumi who was there to support us throughout! :)

(The Color Caravan owns the copyright for all the photographs in this post. Cannot be used in any form without permission.)