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Indian Handicrafts - Gifts & Accessories Magazine
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Colourful lacquered elegance : Sankheda Furniture
The colourful land of Gujarat displays its exotic tradition and culture through its beautiful variety of Sankheda.
Gujrat State is a home for exquisite and vibrant wooden handicraft, which features the elegance and beauty of work. The traditional artwork of Gujrat includes wide array of furniture, jewelry, metal work items, embroidered garments, colourful linen, leather work, bead work, mirror work etc. Most of these items are used in the daily life of people and made exclusively by hand.
The Sankheda named after a small town situated in the bank of River Narmada involves an effective craftwork and exquisite quality. Geographically lies to the north east of Gujrat and famous for its furniture that exhibits unique identity and antique art in Indian traditional handicrafts. Parts like Bhavnagar, Surat and Kutch are also involved in the same process of lacquered furniture making similar to sankheda. They are made from 100% seasonal teakwood. The distinct feature of sankheda lies in to the entire making of furniture involves skilled handwork and artwork that ensures the formidable strength and high durability.
The making of this furniture involves rotary action of wood with tools and shaved and smoothened to make them round in a shape. Extra coatings of primer makes them dry and are decorated with the paintings of floral and abstract designs. These paintings generally vary from geographical shapes to traditional motifs.
All this work is done by the special brush made from the hair of squirrel's tail. The shades of gold, silver, maroon, green, vermilion and some times brown are often used with the help of sticks dipped in a colour mixture of dyes, powdered zinc, lac and resin. Now the new generation of artisans has successfully experimented with the colours like, ivory, green and purple.
To highlight all these designs, the pieces goes back to lathe where they are polished with the pressure of akik stone followed by the application of lacquer. After this process is over they are burned in the burning coal leaving the coat of lacquer behind which is smoothened with the leaf of Kewda tree. With completion of this work they were drilled for fitting torque and groove joints to be assembled in the form of sankheda furniture.
This furniture exhibits a large amount of delicateness that requires great care for their preservation. They have to be protected from direct sun light or heat as they may loose their glow or colours fade. To keep it clean it requires only a piece of dry cloth avoiding the use of oil or water.
The process of furniture making has undergone various changes due to the modern techniques and instruments. The lathe, used in this whole process initially manually operated is now motorised however these artisans are not in favor of disturbing the natural ingredients used to make furniture. The traditional way of tinning i.e. kalai is still done in the old form to avoid any kind of impurities.
At sankheda the choices ranges from vibrant colours to delicate designs and from simple styles to ravishing artwork. These varieties can be fitted from living room to kitchen with the taste of elegance. Now these varieties from sankheda are available in variety of colours like yellow, green, black and current popular trends in copper, silver, zinc etc.
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