11.03.2011
NAXALBARI A STRATEGIC CENTRE OF THE 90'S FOR THE INDIAN AND NEPALESE TRIBAL ANTIQUES FROM BIHAR BENGAL TERAI
RAVANA MASK, Terai, collected in the mid 80's this fine and genuine item from an iconographic point of view it's similar with the one edited in the catalogue Als Die Gotter Noch Waren Masken und Skulpturen aus dem Himalaya (Museum im Ritterhaus Offenburg 2002 - Pierre Zink collection). Courtesy of Ethnoeidos photo archive.
Bengal, Bihar and Assam became centres of indian tribal trade when Orissa's Khond figurines dried up and bronzes from Chhattisgarh's Bastar, became too expensive.
So Naxalbari became in the early 90's a strategic centre of the West Bengal's for the tribal antiques from Bihar, Bengal and Terai, located few kilometres to Kakarvitta in Nepal and 13 hour journey to Katmandu the central transit point for the Indo-Himalayan art.
The resident dealers of Naxalbari collected in a decade especially carvings of the Santhal people, among these the marriage litters Palanquin Panels, dismanted and sold separately, Santhal masks, the sigle-string lutes Dhodro Banam, and Rajbanshi masks a semi-tribal group called in Nepal Koch, and linked with the Hinduised iconography.
Genuine items were normally turned to the Katmandu market ; Delhi and Jodhpur were the destinations for the replica objects through the hands of the Gujarati paratroopers, many who have also monopolised the tribal trade in other states.
In the mid 90's all around Naxalbary many families involved in making hundreds of wooden reproductions.
In this way this production of fakes makes antiques hunting more complex, also for the fact that in lack of documentation of the right iconography of the local tribal art (and in lack of university scholars), only very few people have emerged as ethnographic savants, able to decode genuinity and provenance of the artifacts
The Tribal Art of Middle India, 1951, by Verrier Elwin it is probably one of the very few notable books devoted to this matter (we can add also Unknown India Ritual Art in Tribe and Village,1968, by Stella Kramrich).
The most prized objects in the Katmandu market were obviously the ones that were chiseled and faked the most.
Forgers are able to hoax age to the wood by applying bees wax and oil and rubbing it till it shines like coagulated blood, or with a sort of 'baptism' in potassium permanganate, shock treatment in diluted acid and a final mummification with wax polish.
20:58
Écrit par ETHNOFLORENCE
dans NEPAL MASKS NEPAL NEPALI NEPALESE HIMALAYAN MASKS |
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Salut et beaucoup de remerciement pour ce splendide blog skynet, je le trouve extremement agréable à lire et les textes sont super enrichissant. Je suis moi même entrain de mettre en place un site web mais sur wordpress car celà est très pratique de partager et de interpeller.
Écrit par : barcelone | 10.01.2012
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