Tales Of Modern India: 3D Idols To Mark Durga Puja

KOLKATA: This year, West Bengal's biggest festival is a mixed bag of techniques.

Veteran sculptors and artists at Kumartuli, the largest hub of clay modelers in West Bengal, swear by the malleability of the yellow straw and the fluidity of the sticky alluvial soil or entel maati that gets deposited on the river banks.

On the other end, there are craftsmen in quest for methods like 3D printing to create visually dynamic life-size models from material such as paper.

At India's oldest museum, for the first time in its 200- year-old history, a group of school children are helping to scale up a post-Gupta (dated 7th-10th century) period 6 inch by 4 inch sandstone plaque (Mahishamardini) from Bhita in Bodhgaya, into a six foot by 11 foot structure. It is being fabricated out of clay and straw at an idol-making workshop that kicked off Sep 16 in the Museum's courtyard.

"This is the first time that we are replicating and scaling up the plaque. The children were given a basic understanding of how to do the straw armature and the various layers of clay. Now, they can appreciate the work of the clay modelers and when they grow up they will have something to say," N.C. Mondal, the head of the modeling unit of the museum who is guiding the students along with this team, told IANS.

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