Pottery Town Visit, 14th March

Having heard a lot of pottery town, made me always wanted to visit it. Finally a thread started at the group brought lot of enthusiast together and Saturday morning was when we planned to go shooting.

Pottery town is not far from Fraser Town Police station.

Most of the new folks don’t seem to have idea of where is it located and some of the auto rickshaw drivers could come to help in finding the direction.

The place is not huge and does not give a feel of separated locality of potters’ men. As you reach around a curve on the pottery road, suddenly a bunch of houses appear with nothing but pots and everything which you could imagine made out of clay.

It actually looks a little incomprehensible to see pots and clay items acquiring every possible place in these houses, on the top, roofs, gallery, front courtyards and street.

Soon introspection leads to understanding that not many places are left which involve so heavily in this line of business, which some how is phasing out with time.

The cost of storage in such metropolitans can cost a bomb whereas the chances of damage are extremely high. The potter men’s houses make for best storage solution making this place so very characteristic in appearance.

The potters here are extremely friendly in nature and would talk freely about the nature of their work and what it takes to make a living out of it. Most of the houses have a room where the senior of the business, gets down to making proper set clay for making lanterns, cups, and others. They also these days use electric machines rather than the typical manually rotating wheel for giving shape of clay. Little probe shows that its technical advancements like this which have acted as fuel to their line of business. Had it been for that wheel rotating pot making, all of them would have long gone out of this business.

But it’s not only the rising storage costs, lack of space and depleting market which is a trouble to these craftsmen. Bad weather and also availability of suitable clay to be used has been keeping them awake through nights. Its festivals like Diwali when everyone’s house light up with lamps, these fellows feel relaxed and get to push most of their products into the market.

The innovations in their product lines has been giving hopes with wind-chimes, pots with taps and lot of other such items being brought into being. I just wish that their innovations and help from government by promotion of clay pots should help them continue trading in this line. It was a fascinating visit to Pottery Town and I wish to explore the place even closely by visiting more times.

Do check out my Flickr for more photos here