Handicrafts are a skill to produce creative designer material with their hands instead of some heavy machinery. It is a useful and a very necessary skill to have if you are a woman of Indian society. But not only women, this skill is not gender based and a lot of men are also skilled with handicraft. Even a lot of men and women are making a career out of this extraordinary skill. India has a wide population of handicraft skilled craftsmen. We can witness such art in states like Rajasthan, Gujarat, Orissa, Assam, Kashmir and many south Indian states also, whereas Rajasthan handicrafts are the most fascinating and spellbinding among all these states.
Handicrafts can come in any face from simple decoration items to great utility products like – cross stitching, painting, quilting etc. According to the statistics India is home to around 7 million of artisans, mostly found in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Kashmir etc. The purpose of teaching art and craft in schools is to make them familiarize and learn to value the artifacts.
Worshiping Handicrafts
Not only as a skill in earlier times, handicraft has a religion-like image in the ancient societies of Rome and Greek. ‘Minerva’ in roman culture was considered the goddess of handicrafts and art. ‘Athena’ was the goddess of crafts and peacetime pursuits in common. She was patronised for the goddess of spinning and weaving, to be exact.
Handicraft as a Means of Income
Handicrafts were and still are a widely famous profession among our society whether it is a neighborhood boutique or some handicraft exporters in Jaipur. A Lot of people see handicraft as a natural born quality, which comes with your birth. But today with the advancement of technology it has been proven that it can be taught and learned according to your needs and interests as well. Rajasthan handicrafts have several schools of its own to teach and give this art to the society as their legacy. Big companies, who are engaged in trade and export, produce handicrafts in mass quantities which are called handicraft goods. Most of them deal in handicrafts of cultural or religious significance but other materials are also evident like textile, figurines, vases, murtis, crockery items, etc. several decoration materials and things like marble wine glasses, crockery are exported by Indian skilled craftsmen.
Handicraft as a career, a hobby or as anything requires three basic elements to make their art a quality product. The three basic elements for handicrafts as mentioned by a lot of experts are:
- Design
- Material
- Technique
Design:
A very basic and initial element in the process of handicraft is design. It is a plan or scheme in form or a drawing, mould, paper anything. First we have to work out the targets and goals in forming an object. Either in trade or in domestic need, we have to understand what are the needs of a customer. What kind of object he/she requires or at a domestic level. Which product will be more useful to make according to the home use.
Material:
Another most important and serene ingredient in handicraft is what kind of material is being used in handicraft. This can be thought according to the design as if you have planned to give something over a long distance place or even overseas then heavy and breakable material like marble won’t do much good, but things made up of wood or a textile product will be the perfect fit for you to engage with. Same is the matter with domestic use too, if you have toddlers and children at your house then buying a fragile napkin holder has high chances of creating a hazard at your home so to play safe and nice, the choice should be of cloth made napkin holders or wooden one.
Technique:
Last but not the least is a worthwhile element, technique. What technique are you using to attain or produce handicraft is a very big question that comes as a hurdle for most of the people. But no need to worry, with some simple tips and tricks this problem won’t bother you much. If you ever face issues like this simply ask yourself questions like, what is your budget in producing the handicraft, if you are a professional then what are the needs and expectations of your customer is an overriding question, and especially how much time do you have to make that handicraft. If you have been given a limited time period project and need to produce craft in bulk then you should invest in some machinery or human resources to produce great items in limited time and according to the money engage in its production technique.
At the end it is most important to realize that through handicrafts, India has been a major source of economy and development and as a patriot or even as a human being it is our duty to appreciate and become vocal for the local products as much as we can.
