Crafts village, Mandvi: a centre for traditional crafts of kutch

Abstract

The salt marshes of Kutch have always been intriguing. Be it the colourful craft amidst the monotonous landscape or the natural calamities that the region has endured, this region has always been the subject of curious interest to many. Essentially famous for its vivid variety of crafts, Kutch is a proud home to an interesting number of craft villages sprawled all across the region. These villages are not only thriving but consistently establish the identity of the Saurashtra region of the state of Gujarat. For the artisans of Kutch, the craft is not just a means of livelihood, it is a way of life. They art of craft making has been passed down through generations within families, keeping the tradition and the craft alive through centuries. The people are born and brought up amidst the craft which given identity to the family, the village and the region. As such with the advent of industrialisation, the craft making industry was sidelined to give way to the machine produced craft. Their incomes are very limited thereby forcing the artisans to abandon their craft, and move to the city to work as labour. Overtime, the architecture of this region also has been found to swerve from its roots and adopt a “modern” or rather a westernized outlook. With the wave of modernism, their mud houses were replaced with steel and concrete buildings. They were eager to shed their backward mud and thatch image and adopt the “modern” image. A blind aping of the western built structures was marring the traditional and quintessential Kutch landscape which ultimately resulted in massive destruction during the 2001 Bhuj earthquake. Kisho Kurokawa in his book “The Philosophy of Symbiosis” argued that technology does not take root when it is cut off from culture and tradition. Transfer of technology requires adaptation to the region, the unique situations and customs. We must expect our settlements to adapt around change rather than uproot a culture to give way to a pre-existing notion of what it should be. On a deeper retrospect, after the Bhuj Earthquake it was observed that the traditional/ vernacular houses survived the disaster while all the new buildings lay in shambles. These traditional buildings are a result of years of endurance to nature perfected time and again by its users over generations. But the question remained - how to reinstate their new found image of modernity? Hence, the need to reinvent the traditional house is realized. Post disaster, the state of Gujarat also recognized the value and importance of the crafts as the primary livelihood of the artisans and began to invest in their promotion. The government initiated several housing schemes to rehabilitate the poverty-stricken artisans and give them back their livelihood. This project is one such an initiative. This paper aims to study the existing craft villages, their way of life, work and social construct in order to re-create the village atmosphere in a centre for the promotion of arts and crafts.