THE CARMEL BEAT
The Rejuvenation of Pottery Town
Miriyam Jomy Alias
Almost 100 years ago, forty families of artisans moved in from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and settled in Bengaluru after the introduction of the first railway line in the city. As time passed, the settlement accumulated more potters and grew up to a hundred in number to form the Pottery Town that we know today. The town has evolved and moulded itself to fit into the constantly changing times of people. These changes caused a shift from old, conventional lifestyles and preferences to newer ones. However, many have found a way back to these “old” preferences as they are reminded of the benefits of the same. The story of Pottery Town echoes similar tones.At the dawn of commercialisation, Pottery Town started noticing a trend in the demand for its pots and pans. The demand for terracotta pots had fallen as a result of the rise in demand of the newer, cheaper and long lasting alternatives, which could be easily mass produced and manufactured without needing the labouring effort of an artisan. People started using steel and aluminium alternatives as they were more durable than terracotta and were more widely available.
Clay was the perfect supplement to metals as it overcame their shortcomings such as scarce availability and cost as the means to extract it were complex and inaccessible. It has also carried forward benefits to health and longevity. According to a few studies, the new alternatives to clay and terracotta containers, which are aluminium vessels and containers, tend to erode and mix with food items which are later consumed by us. This erosion and absorption into our bodies continues recurrently without our knowledge that at times it exceeds the tolerable level of weekly intake.
However, there was soon an upward curve developing again. Did the potters beat capitalism and win their way to the hearts of the people? We see that as more and more people from younger generations in pursuit of their passions, find their way to pottery town. These days, there are several people who come in to learn pottery and take it up as an occupation, this itself has helped revive Pottery Town as it is now actively engaged in taking pottery classes. This allows an inflow of the educated youth who are exposed to the competitive world outside to come and use their exposure and knowledge to turn pottery into a thriving venture. This inflow of intellectual capital into the field enables it with what it earlier lacked, allowing it to put out the right information from scientific sources to help build awareness among customers and to build itself to fit the competitive world outside. Moreover, the Internet and widely dispersed information has allowed people to be more conscious of every aspect of their life and every possible dimension of the decisions they make.
This was because it was carefully distributed owing to the keen and cunning marketing technologies which were employed to keep the business on its feet. Pottery Town was slowly sinking because it did not have the capital to compete with these industries. This had disturbed their functioning forcing them to switch to alternative modes of sustenance by doing jobs which were in demand and giving up their ancestral artform. They settled to making money the way capitalism allowed them to, and slowly got absorbed into the system which they so gracefully stood out off.
Prior to the wave of consumerism, mass production and industrialisation hit the way people went about life, people relied on terracotta pots to store their grains and present their meals in.
When information about research that links use of terracotta to an extended life-span started becoming more accessible, people started drifting back to this old tradition of using terracotta utensils.
Dinakaran states that the widespread availability and easy accessibility to information is what has enabled this. Health and lifestyle concerns are now rising and this change in the attitude of people has helped in capitalising the profession that had been defeated by the ease of industrialisation. Moreover, people these days have a taste for art and tend to appreciate it better, adding synergy to the demand for these clay creations. Capitalism too has reached a contradictory stage, where consumerism and mass production are replaced with minimalism and sustainability which too has its own dimensions which enable it to be capitalised. Similarly, pottery towns have benefited from this change from cheaper and durability to health and benefit oriented consumption patterns.