The Indian Craftsman

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Probsthain & Company, 1909 - Artisans - 130 pages

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Page 71 - Waste not your time in idleness and indolence, and occupy yourselves with that which will profit yourselves and others beside yourself.
Page 24 - There are many that hate painting ; but such men I dislike. It appears to me as if a painter had quite peculiar means of recognizing God ; for a painter in sketching anything that has life, and in devising its limbs, one after the other, must come to feel that he cannot bestow individuality upon his work, and is thus forced to think of God, the Giver of life, and will thus increase in knowledge.
Page 104 - India, and who, for all the marvellous tissues and embroidery they have wrought, have polluted no rivers, deformed no pleasing prospects, nor poisoned any air ; whose skill and individuality the training of countless generations has developed to the highest...
Page 99 - ... remain in full municipal vigour all over the peninsula. Scythian, Greek, Saracen, Afghan, Mongol, and Maratha have come down from its mountains, and Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, and Dane up out of its seas, and set up their successive dominations in the land ; but the religious trades-union villages have remained as little affected by their coming and going as a rock by the rising and falling of the tide...
Page 101 - Europe to understand what things may be done by machinery, and what must be done by hand-work, if art is of the slightest consideration in the matter. But if, owing to the operation of certain economic causes, machinery were to be gradually introduced into India for the manufacture of its great traditional handicrafts, there would ensue an industrial revolution which, if not directed...
Page 102 - ... gold and silver earrings, and round tires like the moon, bracelets and tablets and nose-rings, and tinkling ornaments for the feet, taking his designs from the fruits and flowers around him, or from the traditional forms represented in the paintings and carvings of the great temple, which rises over the grove of mangoes and palms at the end of the street above the lotus-covered village tank.
Page 58 - ... is to be beaten with the great Maul, he holds it, still sitting upon his Stool, and they must hammer it themselves, he only with his little Hammer knocking it sometimes into fashion. And if it be any thing to be filed, he makes them go themselves and grind it upon a Stone, that his labour of fileing may be the less ; and when they have done it as well as they can, he goes over it again with his file and finisheth it. That which makes these Smiths thus stately is, because the Towns People are...
Page 17 - Tanjore an agreement by which the entire guild binds itself to a contract executed on its behalf by an individual member of the guild for the supply of oil in perpetuity for a sacred lamp. The inscription runs as follows : ' We, all the following shepherds of this village . . . agree to become security for Eran Sattan, a shepherd of this village, (who) had received 90 ewes of this temple in order to supply ghl for burning one perpetual lamp.

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