Arts and Crafts of Tamilnadu.

• Author: Richman, Paula
• Position: Review

Edited by NANDITHA KRISHNA, with photographs by V. K. RAJAMANI. Ahmedabad: MAPIN PUBLISHING, 1992. Pp. 179, color plates. $45.

Another in Mapin's "Living Traditions of India" series, this beautifully produced multi-authored volume highlights selected painting as well as three-dimensional arts and crafts in Tamilnadu, with a special section on Thanjavur painting. Over half the book consists of crisp and rich color photographs, shot to highlight overall form, details of ornamentation, range of designs, and forms of production. Although one could classify this volume as a "coffee table book," the reader who sifts through its prose finds a great deal of useful information. Editor (and contributor) Nanditha Krishna has organized the book primarily around media used: textiles, bronze, other metalware, jewelry, terracottas, woodcraft, stone carving, painting, and fibrecrafts. The final chapter deals with religious festivals and folk toys.

A large portion of the book concerns three-dimensional art-forms. Krishna's chapter on bronzes presents a spectrum of examples from Cola temple images of Siva and Parvati to modern Karumariyamma icons, as well as a folk bronze of horse and rider. V. N. Srinivasa Desikan's discussion of metalware focuses primarily on images of Hindu deities, but also covers ritual items such as a "tree lamp," cooking vessels, and a "five-faced" metal percussive instrument used in the Thiruvarur Temple. Some of V. K. Rajamani's most exquisite plates appear in Shakunthala Jagannathan's chapter on jewelry, which explains the design of particular kinds of wedding jewels and demonstrates which aspects of their production enable them to follow the lines of the limbs they adorn. Jagannathan enumerates what ancient courtesans wore from head to toe, as well as what medicinal qualities have been attributed to which gems. In a few places she fails to distinguish between jewelry worn in centuries past and present. Krishna's chapter on terracottas reveals that Salem district contains the oldest terracotta Ayannar images in Tamilnadu, that fisherfolk prefer an elephant as mount for Ayannar while farmers prefer a horse, and that potters making terracotta figures for a festival or to renew an icon include a handful of mud from an earlier image. One might question, however, whether it is true that Ayannar images guard the entrance to "every village in Tamilnadu" (p. 87). In addition to his overview of stone carvings in Mahabalipuram, Ganapathy...