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Saturday, October 24, 2009

We have spent 2 days in Jaipur. This is the city that is know for its jewels. We went to see how they make the jewelry. It is amazing how rough the stones start out. Then we saw them working with small rubies, a cut called cabochans. These are small rounded stones, not faceted, that they affix to the end of a stick with a type of wax and then they turn in on a wheel to polish it.

We also went to see how they do the block printing that Jaipur is also famous for. I was lucky enough to buy a few simple wooden blocks used for making the prints from a street vendor. Perhaps when I get home I can see if your art teacher would like to use them to do some block printing. We visited the area where the cloth, which comes from Bombay as undyed cotton muslin, is bleached white and then dyed all of the many beautiful colors we are seeing here. They use plants, fruits and herbs to make all of the dye colors. They were gorgeous!

We went to a small local shop that makes their own blue pottery and learned how they shape it using a pottery wheel, fire it in a handmade round kiln, and then hand paint every piece.

Namaste