Month: March 2025

Colours of Childhood: Crayons

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A recent weekend spent with a toddler revived the memories and joys of crayons. While playthings and pastimes have changed considerably, especially in this digital age, there are some that continue to retain their charm. Crayons are among these.

Opening a fresh box of these colourful sticks neatly lined up with their wrappers, has been a special feeling, over generations. The distinctive smell from the paraffin used in their making, equally triggers memories, long after childhood. According to a Yale University study the scent of Crayola crayons is among the 20 most recognizable scents to American adults; coffee and peanut butter are numbers 1 and 2!

The attractive colours and the smell almost triggers an urge to bite into one. And, certainly, most toddlers are often more interested in tasting the colours, rather than drawing with them!

What makes crayon? A crayon (or wax pastel) is a stick of pigmented wax used for writing or drawing. Wax crayons differ from pastels, in which the pigment is mixed with a dry binder such as gum arabic, and from oil pastels, where the binder is a mixture of wax and oil.

While these wax sticks as we know them date back a few hundred years, the technique of using wax with colours was a method known to Ancient Egyptians who combined hot beeswax with coloured pigment to fix colour into stone. Ancient Greeks and Romans used wax, tar and pigment to decorate ship bows and for drawing. The first crayons, used for marking, appeared in Europe, and were made with charcoal and oil, and hence were in a single colour—black.

Crayons in their more recognizable form were invented in the United States in 1903. They were developed by a company called Binney and Smith who were originally manufacturers of red iron oxide for painting barns and lamp black which had a number of applications including making rubber tyres black.

In the early 1900s the company moved on to making marking crayons for commercial use. These were used as waterproof markers in factories but they contained toxic substances and were not suitable to be used by children. The company then entered into the school market with slate school pencils and dustless chalk. Here they saw that there was potential for the use of colouring tools for educational use in the classroom. Based on feedback from schoolteachers Edwin Binney and his wife Alice developed wax crayons. They mixed waxes, talcs and pigments to form non-toxic sticks which were wrapped in paper, making these safe and mess-free. They put these on the market in 1903 under the brand name Crayola. The name was created by Alice as a blend of craie, the French word for chalk and ola from oleaginous (oily paraffin wax). Ola was also a popular ending for products at that time. The first boxes had 8 coloured crayons (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, black, and brown), and sold for 5 cents, in yellow-and-green boxes which were labelled ‘school crayons’. For the next 45 years, the colour mix and the colour names remained unchanged.
While later many companies began manufacturing crayons, the word Crayola became synonymous with crayons and continues to be so to this day.

For the first forty years, each Crayola crayon was hand-rolled in paper wrappers with distinctive labels and names. Automated wrapping started only in the 1940s. Over the next hundred years Crayola introduced packs of 16, 24, 32, 48, 64, and 96 crayons. There have been over 400 Crayola colours created since the crayons were launched. The company now manufactures 120 standard crayon colours. In addition, there are specialty crayons like metallic, gel and glitter crayons.

The history of naming the colours is a reflection of the changing times and perceptions. While the set of 8 colours remained unchanged for the first 45 years, by 1949, with 48 colours in the box, the palette included colours with more imaginative name such as thistle, periwinkle, carnation pink, bittersweet, cornflower, melon, salmon, and spring green. With the addition of new crayons taking the number up to 64 the colours included Copper, Plum, Lavender, Mulberry, Burnt Orange, and Aquamarine. The psychedelic spirit of the 1970s was reflected with the addition, in 1972, of fluorescent colours: Chartreuse, Ultra Blue, Ultra Orange, Ultra Red, Hot Magenta, Ultra Green, Ultra Pink, and Ultra Yellow.

The 1990s saw the retirement of eight old shades and their replacement with new ones–Cerulean, Vivid Tangerine, Jungle Green, Fuchsia, Dandelion, Teal Blue, Royal Purple, and Wild Strawberry. The decade also reflected the response to cultural sensitivities. In 1999, the name Indian Red was changed to Chestnut because educators believed that children would think the name represented the skin colour of American Indians rather than the reddish-brown pigment found near India.

In 1993, to mark its 90th birthday Crayola invited the public to name 16 new Crayola crayon colours. Some of the winning suggestions included Asparagus, Macaroni and Cheese, Timber Wolf, Cerise, Mauvellous, Tropical rainforest, Denim. Pacific Blue. Granny Smith Apple, Shamrock, Purple Mountains Majesty, Tickle Me Pink, Wisteria and Razzmatazz. The last name was the suggestion of 5 year-old Laura Bartolomei, who was declared the younger Crayola colour winner.

In 2000 Crayola’s first online consumer poll to name the favourite Crayola colour was held. Blue emerged as the all-time favourite, and six shades of blue made up the list of top ten colours!

Crayola marked its 100th anniversary by once again inviting crayon users to contribute names. With increasing diversity in schools and growing awareness of being ‘politically correct’, in 2020 Crayola introduced a new line of 24 colours named Colors of the World to reflect the multicultural skin tones of people around the world.

Thus Crayola remained on top of the game by always being dynamic, responsive, and participatory to reflect the signs of the times, as it were. Crayola continues to be synonymous with crayons, not only in the USA, but now across the world. I remember when we were children, and our local palette limited to the standard box of 12 colours from Camel or Camlin, our great dream was to be gifted with multi-layered jumbo box of Crayola crayons by a relative coming from the USA!

Today perhaps the choices of art materials and techniques have increased, but the fascination with crayons certainly has not decreased! There are Crayola crayon collectors who are always searching for samples of rare or discontinued colour pieces. And America celebrates National Crayon Day on 31 March every year, to celebrate the colourful history of these simple sticks that have provided generations of children with hours of creative fun.

–Mamata

The Leaves Come Drifting Down

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At the moment, leaves are the bane of my life.

They drift down in their tens through the day. The lawns, porch and verandahs are no sooner swept that they come drifting down to make a mess, yet again.

And Saturday, when Bangalore was hit with unexpected torrential rains, our house almost flooded because fallen leaves had covered the water outlets on our terrace and there was a good six inches accumulated before we realized it and cleared the outlets. A few more minutes and the water would have entered the house.

But in general of course, who doesn’t love leaves: the variety of the shades of green, their shapes and sizes, the shadows they cast, the way they rustle in the breeze or when birds and squirrels play among them.

There are some people who take this love and appreciation to aesthetic heights. They are the leaf-artists.

Some people of course consider the leaf itself as art.’ There is artistry to a leaf that I find hard to put into words. In looking at leaves, the colours and veining, the patterns and textures, I get a good feeling. Leaves are nature’s artistry on display’, says Hank Erdmann, a leaf-photographer.

Others use the leaf as the medium. These leaf-artists express themselves through various creative expressions using leaves. This spans leaf printing, leaf carving, leaf painting and leaf collage. All of these are based on highlighting the leaf’s natural colours, shapes and textures.

It is likely that leaf-art is as old as our cave-dwelling ancestors. One can easily imagine our grandnmother picking up a leaf and carving a design on it with a sharp stone. And from these projects must have emerged the use of leaves as a medium for writing on—palm leaves were used for writing since the 5th century BCE in India. The ephemeral nature of the medium however has not left much proof of art on leaves.

But two contemporary artists have taken leaf-art to a new level.

The first is the Colombo Ecuadorian photographer, Yinna Higuera. Her recent collection ‘Traces’ is a series of portraits of rural Ecuadorian women, made on banana, cocao, coffee and other leaves. The collectoin documents the lives of these women, and portrays their link with nature and its cycles. The exhibition has been shortlisted for a Sony World Photography award, 2025. This is based on the technique of ‘chlorophyll printing’. The images are printed leveraging the leaf’s photosensitivity, merging photography with nature. This is an alternative photographic process where photographic images are developed on natural leaves through the action of photosynthesis, and goes back to the 19th century.

Another artist making waves (or gentle breezes) with his leaf art is Lito, a Japanese artist. He uses a completely different technique. He carefully selects a leaf, makes an intricate drawing on it, and painstaking carves it. The scenes often depict animals, birds and landscapes. Lito makes one leaf-carving every day! For him, this is not just a means of artistic expression, but also a way of managing his ADHD. It helps him focus, be calm–he sees it as a form of meditation. And importantly for him, leaf-carving is a means of earning a livelihood.

So I am going to re-calibrate. And appreciate each leaf as it drifts down to land on my verandah. Before muttering irritably at it!

And to end, here is a poem on leaves by Sarojini Naidu, whom Mamata wrote about a few weeks ago:

Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,
   The sunset hangs on a cloud;
A golden storm of glittering sheaves,
Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,
   The wild wind blows in a cloud.

Hark to a voice that is calling
   To my heart in the voice of the wind:
My heart is weary and sad and alone,
For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,
   And why should I stay behind?

–Meena

PS: Today there are even Leaf Engraving Machines, ‘specialized for intricate leaf designs, perfect for crafting unique art pieces!’

The picture is from Lito’s Instagram page, art_dailydose

International day of Happiness: Caring & Sharing

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In recent times there have been a number of articles about experiments/initiatives to create ‘safe’ places for GenZ achievers where they can simply meet others of their ilk, and as one piece put it “form communities of shared interests and ideas, far away from the superficial posing of the digital world”.   

It is thought provoking, and indeed saddening to read about these. Caught in the frenetic pace of a work culture where people feel they do not have the ‘luxury of time’ that they perceive friendship demands. As one person put it “Colleagues can never be your friends in a competitive space; besides you don’t want to see them in your private time and space”.  The frequent moves from job to job, even place to place, the “stress” of meeting targets, and the long hours spent in cyberspace where the screen is king, leave little time and energy for meaningful human interactions. There is a sense of isolation, leading to a precipitous plunge towards the ultimate act of giving up everything, including one’s own life. What a very sorry state of affairs. Such futility, such a waste of the best years of one’s life. “Burning out” at an age when they should be blossoming into vibrant human beings. 

I feel so blessed that I grew up, and came of age, in an age of friendship. A time when ‘Time’ was a gift freely given and shared between human beings, and not the ubiquitous screen. When families caught up on the day’s doings and happenings over the evening meal, talking face-to-face. When the school days ended with playing with neighbourhood friends at whose homes we were fed and pandered to, as they were in ours. Graduating to college where new friendships blossomed in canteens and bonded through bunked classes. College was indeed the cradle for what was later to be described as the ‘all-round development’ for which today there are Life Coaches. Not to forget a course offered at Yale University called Psychology and the Good Life which is basically about teaching college students how to be happy! A course that “teaches” that feelings of happiness are fostered through socialization, exercise, meditation and plenty of sleep!

A bigger reminder of how far away we have come from those days is the designation of an international day by the United Nations which is called the International Day of Happiness.

The idea for the International Day of Happiness was proposed by UN advisor Jayme Illien in 2011. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution which recognised happiness as a “fundamental human goal” and called for “a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes the happiness and well-being of all peoples”.

In 2012 the first ever UN Conference on Happiness took place, and the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution which decreed that the International Day of Happiness would be observed every year on 20 March. The resolution was initiated by Bhutan, a country which recognized the value of national happiness over national income since the early 1970s and famously adopted the goal of Gross National Happiness over Gross National Product. All 193 United Nations member states have adopted the resolution calling for happiness to be given greater priority.

The day was celebrated for the first time in 2013. This day aims to highlight the importance of happiness and well-being as universal goals and aspirations in the lives of people around the world. 

Every year, on this day, the United Nations publishes the World Happiness Report which explores the latest research on the importance of benevolence, empathy and trust as vital drivers of both individual and national happiness. It also announces the theme for the year.

The theme for the International day of Happiness 2025 is Caring and Sharing. This is a reminder that lasting happiness comes from caring for each other, feeling connected and being part of something bigger. The theme brought for me a flashback to my years of work in a workplace where this was the very theme that ran through every day of every year. I remember how this was also the name of the precious meeting space and time that the ‘girls’ called their own—one where, in addition to “theme sari days” there was an open and non-judgemental sharing of angst, anxiety, dilemmas and doubts, highs and lows, laughter and tears. This engendered a seamless blending of many generations, and the mutual caring and sharing that made our lives so rich. This was the ‘safe space’ where bonds were built; bonds that endure even when time and distance have separated us physically.  

A more inclusive gender-neutral space and time was the twice a day tea-table time. Tea table became the venue for easing in the newcomers; teasing and ribbing the old-timers; there were no hierarchies and no bosses. The agenda was whatever the mood of the table—sharing, admonishing, admiring, agonising and venting, and yes, laughing a lot.

It was an important support system in so many ways. After just 15 minutes, one returned to one’s desk feeling much better. You weren’t the only one who struggled to keep going as you juggled work and home; your child’s behaviour was not as worrisome as you imagined it was; and yes, in-laws happened to the best of us! It was not only about chit-chat and food; it was where serious discussions took place—about work and work culture; about the state of the world and the nation; about books read and films seen, people met and to be met. It was where so many “aha” moments happened. Above all it was a sense of sharing and caring that permeated.

It is sad that people today are craving such time and space, and above all the comfort of sharing and caring. It is sad that we need a reminder that the world is a better place when we connect and care about the people around us.

Many years before such a reminder became necessary, Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt who was the President of the United States during the Great Depression and World War II shared these words of wisdom:

Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could have in your personal life and in your work; the ability to love others. Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively. After a short time, a very short time, there would be little that one really enjoyed. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people.

–Mamata

Ants and their Homes

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For every one of us, there are about 2.5 million of them. Yes, that’s how much ants out-number us. They inhabit every corner of the world other than Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, and some islands.

We humans swing between appreciation of these insects for their qualities of team work and hard work, and irritation when they invade our homes or kitchens. The ants probably swing between the same two emotions—appreciation of the humans who feed them, and disapproval of clumsy or mean humans who step on them or kill them.

Beyond human approval or disapproval, ants have a huge role in the ecosystem. They serve as seed dispersers for plants, hosts for a wide range of associate organisms, and act as both predator and prey. The role of ants in nutrient decomposition and soil turnover is enormous–they are estimated to excavate up to 13 tons of soil per hectare annually and increase local nutrient availability by a significant order.  Moreover, they create and maintain of microhabitats for a variety of other organisms.

The subject of today’s piece is their homes. They make their homes in a variety of places, and these structures are made with an enormous amount of labour by thousands of the creatures working together.

Most species of ants are soil-nesters. Soil meets their needs for food, moisture and protection. Since these ants move a lot of soil in the process of building their nests, they provide a valuable service to the soil-based ecosystem they occupy by their tunnelling and de-compacting of the soil. Some soil nesting ants construct a simple nest with one vertical tunnel, which has branches on either side for ant food, eggs and larvae. But other ground nesting ants build elaborate below-ground galleries going several metres below ground, with a network of interlocking interconnecting tunnels.

Wood-nesting ants are the next category. Carpenter ants are the best examples of these. They nest in wood that is rotting, dead, dying, or with a high moisture content. The ants bore into the wood and make elaborate nests. They do not eat the wood but deposit the wood they bore outside the nest. While they usually build outdoors in trees, it is not unknown for them to build in wooden structural elements in our houses.

There is category of ants which are called opportunistic nesters. These will nest almost anywhere, including under rocks, concrete slabs, air conditioners, inside holes in walls etc.

Ant nest

A fourth category, which are most visible to us at the moment are arboreal ants which construct nests on trees using leaves. These light red ants Oecophylla smaragdina, popularly known as weaver ants, stitch together individual leaves using larval silk to form nesting cavities.  The nests are round-oval and use leaves of different sizes ranging from 8-32cm. About twenty leaves are used to make each nest. These ants are aggressive in defending their territories, and a colony may take over an entire tree with nests distributed throughout.   Incidentally, these ants, called “Rukkung” in Arunachal Pradesh, are consumed in various forms in some of the North-eastern states.. 

I see these every evening on my walks—the falling leaves in this season leave the trees bare, which make the nests very visible. And marvel at the intricacy of the nests and the hard work that goes into each of them. What wonders there are around us, if only we take a minute to look!

–Meena

Broken Frames, Broken Lives

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Today, each one of us harbours doubts and fears about the rapid rise of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI), smart robots, driverless cars etc., especially whether these will take away jobs from people and give them to machines.

This has happened with every new technology since the industrial revolution. Maybe the time of maximum anxiety around technology and jobs was in the late 1700s to early 1800s, a time when quite a few people in the UK depended on the cotton, wool and silk industries for their livelihoods. This was based on the labour of framework knitters, who like some of our weavers even today, worked in their own homes. Though the hours were long and they got small wages, they were at an equilibrium. 

In the early 1800s, there were around 30,000 knitting-frames in England. But change had already started to set in. Change of fashion (men moving from stockings to trousers) and increasing exploitation of weavers by the middlemen were two major factors. But perhaps the most important was the mechanization and wide-frame machines that were coming in to make production faster. Production moved from homes to factories with this mechanization.

As more and more people lost their livelihoods, anger and frustration boiled over, and mill-owners and the new machines were targeted. The scale of the sabotage that occurred in England between 1811 and 1816 was beyond anything seen before.  In the peak three months of the riots, 175 of these new frames were broken per month! The people involved in these riots and destruction called themselves ‘Luddites’. The origin of the name is not quite clear, but some said it was after Ned Ludd, a legendary weaver who in 1770 was supposed to have smashed such machines.

Governments then, as today, were heavy-handed. Their response to the riots was to pass the Frame-Breaking Bill in the House of Commons in February 1812. The Bill was drastic– it proposed transportation or the death penalty for those found guilty of breaking stocking or lace frames. Not everyone was happy with the draft Bill– in the House of Lords, the poet and social campaigner Lord Byron argued against it saying that it was placing the value of life at “something less than the price of a stocking-frame”.  But such passionate appeals did not help, and the Bill was passed.

The Government would have expected all such riots to stop after the Bill. But exactly the opposite happened. The riots actually became more violent and rioters started using arms. The logic was that if they were going to be punished by death or deporatation for breaking frames, then they might as well do something that really deserved such drastic measures. A popular rhyme at the time was “you might as well be hung for death as breaking a machine”. A few mill owners were in fact killed. Government response also got harsher and several Luddites were hanged.

The climax of the Luddite Rebellion took place at midnight on Friday 28 June 1816. Sixteen men raided the factory of Heathcoat and Lacy at Loughborough, with around 1000 sympathisers cheering them on.  They destroyed nearly all of the fifty-five lace-frames.  Subsequently eight men were sentenced to death and two were transported.

The protests died down after that. Mechanization marched on, and the thousands who were involved in their traditional occupation lost out.

Technology will come. But how do we make the changes so we can reduce the negative impacts? How do we make the world a more inclusive place? Surely we cannot let history repeat itself!

–Meena

Photo-credit: historicalbritain.org/

A Woman of Many Parts: Sarojini Naidu

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In a week when women are being celebrated, and their achievements extoled, it is fitting to remember that in every era of history, in every part of the world, there have been women who have broken boundaries and glass ceilings, and have excelled in numerous fields. This is a good week to celebrate a woman who combined seemingly contrary abilities, and played a significant role in several fields of endeavor. This is Sarojini Naidu.

Textbooks traditionally describe Sarojini Naidu as the Nightingale of India. But she was far more just a singer of songs. A poetess, patriot, fierce nationalist and freedom fighter, politician, eloquent orator, inspirer of masses, perfect hostess, and a feminist and firebrand leader in every sphere.

Sarojini was born on 13 February 1879 in a Bengali Brahmin family, the eldest of eight siblings. Somewhat of a prodigy, she entered the University of Madras at the age of 12; she composed 1000-line poems at 13. After graduating in 1895 with the highest rank, she was awarded a scholarship by the Nizam of Hyderabad, and she spent three years in England, studying at King’s College London, and later at Girton College in Cambridge. During this period she also became involved with the suffragist movement in England. She returned to India in 1898 and married Dr M Govindarajulu Naidu whom she had met in England, (the inter-caste marriage attracted opposition) when she was 19. By the age of 25, Sarojini was mother to four children. Her first major collection of poems was published when she was 26. She had literary fame, and a comfortable lifestyle in Hyderabad where she played the perfect hostess.But this was hardly a deterrent to what was to be an extremely active political life.

Sarojini and Gandhiji shared a special relationship. She had first met him in 1914 in London just as the First World War had broken out. That was the start of a long and close bonding between the two. Sarojini was one of the few who could joke about, and with, Gandhi (she nicknamed him Mickey Mouse!). The two exchanged witty repartees, and reproaches, which were totally free from malice. She could stand up to Gandhi and never hesitated to speak her mind. Yet she remained one of his staunchest supporters all her life, and revered him as a guru.

Sarojini Naidu was drawn to Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement and in 1924 travelled across the world to spread the word about the movement. She was a sought after public speaker. In 1925 she became the first Indian President of the Indian National Congress. She was a front-line participant in the Independence movement. Her participation in the Salt Satyagraha and the Quit India Movement was deemed as ‘anti-British activity’ and she was imprisoned several times for this.

Sarojini Naidu believed that the nationalist cause could not be separated from the movement for women’s rights. She helped establish the Women’s Indian Association along with Annie Besant and a few others, in 1917, which championed women’s right to vote. The same year, along with Annie Besant she went to London to represent the case for women’s franchise before the Joint Select Committee.

She was elected to the Constituent Assembly that drafted the Constitution of India. After India achieved independence on 15 August 1947, Sarojini Naidu was appointed governor of the United Provinces, making her the first woman governor in the country. She remained in the post until she passed away on 2 March 1949.

Sarojini Naidu’s contribution to the freedom movement and to the early years of our new republic was marked by her total dedication combined with her boundless energy and multi-faceted brilliance. This was summed up thus by her fellow freedom fighter Jawaharlal Nehru: She began life as a poet, in later years when the compulsion of events drew her into the national struggle, she plunged into it with all the zest and fire she possessed…. whose whole life became a poem and a song and who infused artistry and grace in the national struggle, just as Mahatma Gandhi had infused moral grandeur to it.

Despite her active political life Sarojini’s literary output was also prolific. She published several volumes of poetry, and held ‘salons’ which attracted an array of intellectuals. She led a hectic and productive life despite suffering from a variety of ailments throughout her life. Her zest for life was undiminished till the end, when she passed away at the relatively young age of 70.   As she wrote to her youngest child a few years earlier: One is not so concerned with a long life as with a ‘merry one’—merry as the sum of worthwhile, rich, full, interesting, and who can say that mine has not been and is not in that sense ‘merry’ as well as long?

On a more serious note, several years earlier when she was in Yervada jail, Sarojini wrote to her daughter Padmaja Naidu: In the course of a long and most variegated life I have learned one superlative truth…that the true measure of life and oneself lies not in the circumstances and events that fill its map but in one’s approach and attitude and acceptance of those things.

An inspiration, and a role model indeed!

–Mamata

Famous Women on the Wall: Happy Women’s Day

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This week we celebrate International Women’s Day.

It was in 1911 that IWD started being marked. A couple of decades after that was when something called the ‘Famous Women Dinner Set’ was commissioned. This was a set of 50 dinner plates depicting famous women down history.

Kenneth Clark (Baron Clark), the art-historian and museum director, commissioned these. (Those of an older vintage may remember the BBC serial ‘Civilization’ which discussed Western art, architecture and philopsophy. Though made in 1969, it was broadcast in India in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s, and was one of the most popular art-history programmes in the world.)

Coming back to the dinner-plates, the artists given the commission were Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, of the famous Bloomsbury Group. This was the name given to a group of English writers, philosophers and artists who met between 1907 and 1930 in the Bloomsbury  district of London, the area around the British Museum , and discussed matters of art and philosophy.

It is said that Kenneth Clark got the idea of commissioning a special dinner service when he was dining off a historic blue-and-gold Sèvres service, originally made for Catherine the Great.

Kenneth and his wife did not interfere in any aspect of the creative work—what form or shape it would take, what pieces it would consist of, or even what it should portray.

In 1933 the work was completed, and after showing it to the Baroness, the artists presented the set of 50 plates to Kenneth Clark, who was probably quite surprised to see the result if his commission, because he thought he would be getting’…a wide ranging set of decorative crockery that included everything from soup tureens to mustard pots’

Picture from https://www.charleston.org.uk/event/famous-women-dinner-service

Vanessa and Duncan had selected 50 famous women down history—twelve each from four categories: Women of Letters (e.g George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, 10th-century Japanese poet Murasaki. Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Barrett Browning); Queens (including Catherine the Great, the Queen of Sheba, Elizabeth I, and Victoria); Beauties (among whom were Pocahontas and Helen of Troy); , and Dancers and Actresses (including Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry and Greta Garbo). That made 48 women. The last two plates portrayed the artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. The artists had hand painted beautiful portraits of their subjects on Wedgewood plates.

Though he was initially a bit confused with the dinner service, it seems that Baron Clark quite grew to like his plates. It is said that he used to select specific plates from the service for use for particular guests, depending on their interests, or to poke fun at their sensitivities.

The dinner set, after being sold and re-sold disappeared from view for some decades, but later re-surfaced. They are now housed in the Charleston Museum in the UK—the original home of Vanessa Bell.

Another major work of art involving women and dinner is ‘The Dinner Party’, a 1979 installation by Judy Chicago. This is a dinner table arranged with place settings for 39 mythical and historical women. They are seated around a triangular table. Though controversial, this is considered a classic of feminist art.

In India we do have portraits (paintings and photographs) of women. But they are outnumbered by artistic works down the ages which put females at the centre—the oldest probably being the Harappan Girl, going back to 1750 BC or thereabouts. From there, to all the art in temples, to Raja Ravi Verma and his goddesses and mythical women, to the controversial portrayals of MF Hussain, to women painted by Amrita Shergill, Anjolie Ela Menon, Arpana Caur, Bharathi Kher and others, which are all classics today.

May many more artists immortalize real women in their art. It is an apt tribute.

Happy Women’s Day!

–Meena

And thanks to all our readers on this, the anniversary of our blog! And all those whose encouragement and support keeps it going!

Missing People: The Village of Dolls

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It sounds like something out of an imaginary futuristic scenario. Entire countries with no young people, no babies being born, and the old dying out until finally there are entire countries without a human population. Incredibly, this is happening here and now. Many countries in Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and East Asia are facing drastic declines in new births, even as the elderly population declines due to deaths. News reports say that the number of babies born in Japan in 2024 was the lowest since records began in 1899. The prospect of population extinction is becoming a reality in South Korea, which has been moving towards a childless society. Of the already dwindling population, young people are abandoning their rural homes and migrating to cities in search of work, leaving no workforce for agriculture and fishing. What will these abandoned villages look like?

There is a village in Japan which is an ironically graphic example of such a scenario. This is Nagoro, an isolated valley town on the Japanese island of Shikoku, the smallest and least visited of Japan’s four main islands. Originally populated by around 300 people, a few years ago only about two dozen old people remained. One of these old people was a father whose daughter moved back to the village to be with him. Tsukimi Ayano who had spent most of her life in Osaka moved back to the island in 2002. 

One of the things that Ayano did when she came back was to make a scarecrow (called kakashi in Japanese) that resembled her father to scare away the birds that were raiding the seeds that she planted on the family plot. In addition to keeping the birds away, Ayano liked that the scarecrow added a dash of something different in the deserted landscape. Having the time, and the skills, Ayano continued making these life-sized and life-like scarecrows for other people’s fields also. From scarecrows, Ayano moved on to making other figures. It became her hobby, and her pleasurable pastime. Initially she made the scarecrows for the fields; then she started making figures that resembled old neighbours who had passed away, or people who had moved away. Ayano felt that these gave her a sense of having some company. It was also a way of commemorating the erstwhile residents of the village, while infusing some spirit in their rapidly vanishing village.

These figures (she calls them ‘dolls’) soon began to populate different parts of the village. They were placed in people’s gardens, at bus stops, in village meeting places—depicted as being engaged in everyday tasks. Walking around the village one could see figures of construction workers installing a road sign, a fisherman on his porch with his daughter, a couple sitting on a river bank, all looking real and ‘ready for action’. After the village school closed down as there were no students, Ayano recreated a classroom with students and teachers, with two of the dolls wearing the same clothes as the last two students who had attended the school.

As she said “I just wanted people to enjoy looking at the dolls and I want to enjoy making them.” Ayano makes all the dolls herself using wooden slabs for the base, cotton clumps for the head and rolled newspapers for the ‘skeleton’ as well as straw and fabric. The dolls come to life with the unique facial expressions she gives each one, shaping the nose and the mouth, choosing the buttons for the eyes, and meticulously crafting the ears. Ayano wants to make sure that her kakashi can hear well!  She dresses them in clothes that, in many cases, belonged to the real characters, or are donated. It takes Ayano about three days to make a doll. Each doll has a life of two to three years as the natural materials weather quickly. Ayano tries to recycle as much of the material as she can, as she makes new dolls to replace the old ones.  

Ayano’s village of dolls Nagoro remained undiscovered and unknown until 2014 when a German filmmaker made a short documentary titled Valley of Dolls. This attracted global attention, and led to an influx of curious tourists to this remote island. Ayano personally felt that the film was dark and sad, whereas for her the process of creating the dolls is a joyous one, and the village itself is a now a curiously vibrant and animated place. Ayano’s acknowledgement of the filmmaker is his replica doll as a figure at a bus stop!

For Ayano these dolls are a celebration of life, not weird reminders of the past. In her mid-seventies now, Ayano continues to live in the village with its population that she has created and continues to nurture.

–Mamata