Nepal's rich craft culture

The rich tapestry of beliefs, religion, ethnicity and other social groupings which make up Napal’s culture have given the breath of life to a huge number of crafts. Many of the villages in the Kathmandu valley are home to members of the Newari ethnic group. Bungamati, our first village homestay, is one such village. Here wood carvers keep their craft alive producing panels, door and window frames which adorn their traditional houses, both in the villages and throughout Nepal. Production of these requires an ability to create perfect repetition, that still bears the hallmarks of handcrafting at the same time begging the question – ‘was that made with a machine?’ 

 

A wood carver fashions decorative edges for panels

Centre door panel

 

 

Proud owner protects her carved doors

 

 

The Nepali's answer to stained glass.

 

Camphor is a popular wood to carve, but like most of their hardwood materials it does not grow locally but instead is hauled up from the Terai, the area of Nepal that borders India. Tools are simple but skill and patience are boundless resulting in the creation of these artefacts. Almost life-size likenesses of Hindu gods can take months to complete, and as we discovered an increasing number are ending up in the homes of the European upper classes.

Camphor is used for many stautues

What a masterpiece of skill!

A great viewpoint for a passing festival parade.

Most workshops are on the ground floor of the popular 4/5 storey dwellings. It seems that each house has another workshop, engaged in another craft. I’ve always wondered if the huge brass statues that decorate the shrines and temples are cast solid or created from sheet metal. Now the secret is out---its sheet metal. Created in a converted lock-up a few men using nothing more than tin snips, a mini disc grinder and a few hammers and punches were creating the most fantastic statues.

Making metal statues, no hi-tec. kit here

Who said you cannot make something out of nothing.

As my own origins are in the north west of England, where there is a rich heritage of textiles I was intrigued to see women spinning sheep’s wool using the simplest of devices. The graceful movement of the arms and delicate tugs from the fingers turn clouds of natural fibre into the raw material of the carpet maker. Once the wool is spun and transferred into skanes of yarn, they are stained with natural dyes such as pomegranate, before being sold on to a weaver and of course its all within the same village.

 

The ancient craft of wool spinning

Spun wool a raw material for carpet weavers

 

The dyed wool being used

 

 

Just a few yards away we witness the melding of old and new technology. In another ground floor room four women are engaged in the most ancient of crafts---wool felting. This finished textile is used in the nomadic wastelands of Tibet as a wind and water proof base layer in the Yurt. Not surprisingly these craftswomen were producing for another market. Smart phone pouches were their end products, again for the export.

Felting workshop produces smart phone pouches.

 

 

Felting in action

 

After visiting a small dairy farm is Harisiddi we heard, in a shed ajoining the house next door, what sounded like rapid machine gun fire. That was a sound I’d heard before, with my son Nick, near army firing ranges at Corfe Castle. On that occaision I had genuinely mistaken the sound for a lonely woodpecker trying to drum up a mate. (my co-worker saw it as a sign that my final marble had been well and truly been lost). So this time we were drawn nearer to confirm our suspicions and were relieved to find not a re-enactment of Top Gun but instead a line of weaving machines going full bore. Once again distant memories of cotton weaving, the sound of clog irons on cobbles and voices shouting ‘ay up lad there’s trouble at mill’ swamped my imagination. Something stires deep down when the air is filled with that rattle of metal on metal and the wooden shuttles fire from one side of the loom to the other. On Skye, only a year before I had witnessed a modern version of this kit powered by a single man peddling the loom! I enquired if the looms were made in England, quietly hoping that the response would be ‘ why yes they were imported from an old mill in Clitheroe, Lancashire’. That’s where the bubble was burst when we discovered that these were indeed Indian looms, a far more realistic outcome. The owner and his two workers were weaving delicate fabrics for the fashion industry

this small shed had about 10 working loomes.

 

Cotton is transferred to bobbins

 

Our smiling dairy farmer friend Krishna stands with the loom owner.

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As we were about to leave the Harisiddi to return to KTM we were lucky enough to meet a group of women who were doing another local traditional craft, weaving shoes from straw.

Shoes being woven from straw