Hyderabad:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented advisor to the United States President,
Ivanka Trump a wooden box of Sadeli craft.
This is a highly
skilled craft technique, native to Surat, of fabricating geometric patterns in
wood.
It is
traditionally used for decorating doors, windows and furniture. It is now also
used for embellishing jewellery boxes, containers and photo frames, sources
said.
What
is Sadeli Craft ?
The repeating
geometric patterns of Sadeli Mosaic are what give it beauty and richness. This
decorative technique is a type of micro mosaic featuring repeating geometric
patterns. A highly skilled craft, it has had a long history in India and the
Middle East with early examples dating back to the 16th century. In the 1800s,
it became popular as a decoration on a variety of boxes, card cases, and chess
boards imported from India. Since Bombay became a center of making them, they
became known as Bombay boxes.
The ancient art
of Sadeli Mosaic is said to have been introduced from Shiraz in Persia via Sind
to Bombay, a long time before Indian boxes appeared. The designs on early boxes
look deceptively simple. The fact is they emerged from a culture which had
mastered geometry and understood how to generate a pattern from a set number of
points. The patterns are so harmoniously combined that their incredible
complexity isn’t immediately apparent to the viewer.
The
Technique
While the
technique may at first seem exquisitely complex, it’s relatively simple.
Nevertheless, it required a great deal of skill and patience.
The first step
in creating a Sadeli mosaic is preparing thin rods by scraping lengths of
ivory, bone or wood into the desired shape, usually triangular. Artisans then
glue these long thin rods together with animal glue, then slice them
transversely to form a repeat pattern. To get variety and contrast, they used
woods like ebony and rosewood, along with natural and green-stained bone and
ivory. Often they mixed in circular shaped rods of silver, pewter or tin.
Finally, they would glue the slices onto the surface of a wooden box, often
made of sandalwood. Craftsmen would then scrape the surface of the slices to
level slight variations. To achieve variations of patterns, they combined the
materials in different ways.
Persian and
Indian makers of this exquisite decorative technique displayed an understanding
of the qualities of the different materials they used. They combined
substances, which could expand and contract according to atmospheric conditions
with others which were hard and unyielding. The result was a sharp definition
of the lines and patterns which made up the whole design.
Anglo-Indian
Boxes
Beginning in the early part of the 18th century, Indian artisans made what came
to be known as Anglo-Indian boxes for the English residents living in India,
who eventually brought or sent them back to England. At the beginning of the
19th century, India began exporting these boxes commercially, although not in
any significant numbers until the 1850s. People valued them so highly that
manufacturers of tins copied the designs on them in the late 19th and early
20th century.
Anglo-Indian
boxes fall into four groups: Rosewood or ebony boxes inlaid with ivory;
sandalwood boxes
veneered in ivory, tortoiseshell, horn, quills or a combination of these
materials; sandalwood boxes covered with Sadeli mosaic; and carved boxes often
combined with Sadeli mosaic.
The first two
categories came from Vizagapatam in East India while the last two came from
Bombay in West India.
English traders
discovered the rich woods and intricate workmanship of Indian artisans, so
colonial government officials began to recognize the work of the Indian artists
and craftsmen as a source for satisfying the need for furniture and boxes,
which would both serve to enhance English households in India. This gave rise
to the cabinetmaking workshops in Vizagapatam between Calcutta and Madras.
Craftsmen made
the first boxes to be decorated with Sadeli mosaic of rosewood or ebony with
ivory, incised to give further definition to the decoration, directly inlaid
into the wood. The shape of the early boxes was either sloping at the front
with a flatter section at the back, reminiscent of English writing slopes, or
rectangular. Artisans inlaid the borders with stylized floral scrolls and the
centers with a single floral motif following a circular or oval symmetrical or
asymmetrical pattern. The edging was of ivory pinned with ivory pins, or a
combination of ivory and wood. Both ornamental and protective, both helped
protect the end grain against the weather.
Ornamentation
The style of the ornamentation on the early boxes was formal yet flowing and robust, a perfect compliment to the strength and grain of the rosewoods. The boxes often had silver escutcheons and drop handles. Indian artisans made this type of box up to the middle of the 18th century.
The style of the ornamentation on the early boxes was formal yet flowing and robust, a perfect compliment to the strength and grain of the rosewoods. The boxes often had silver escutcheons and drop handles. Indian artisans made this type of box up to the middle of the 18th century.
They also made
ivory inlaid boxes in more conventional English shapes, such as writing,
document, and jewelry boxes later in the 18th and 19th centuries. The designs
by this time had moved on to covering more of the box in an integrated pattern
or with a simple edge decoration with a small central motif.
In the early
boxes, which date from the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, there are
large panels of mosaic covering the tops and sides. It took incredible skill to
cover such large areas without any wavering of the pattern. To further enhance
the symmetry of these boxes, artisans impeccably matched the corners and where
the sides joined the bottom.
To meet the
demand, additional Indian workshops began making Sadeli mosaic boxes in the
latter part of the 19th century. The accuracy of execution and the sharpness of
design suffered, however, although boxes from this period are pretty and easier
to find.
The majority of
the boxes found in the antiques market today are from the early to mid 19th
century. By the 1820s, Indian craftsmen covered few boxes completely in Sadeli
mosaic. By this time, they began to use Sadeli mosaic more sparingly combined
with other materials, mainly ivory. Latter sandalwood boxes, veneered in ivory,
had circles, diamonds or bands of mosaic inserted as further decoration.
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