Arts and Crafts of Rajasthan
Rajasthan is fortunate to be blessed with the boon of availing one of the richest collection of arts and crafts in the country. The reason which comes first in sight of having the unique arts and crafts may be due to historical background of Rajasthan which had been under the control of various rulers struggling to establish their supremacy in the region. The history of arts and crafts dates back to 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. where the sculptures present in baroli and hadoti region shows the existence of arts school in 10th century.
Every period in the history of Rajasthan has its own contribution in encouraging the work of arts and crafts. The history states that the rulers and their officials were great appraisers of arts and crafts. They were interested in decorating their places with the makings of crafts. The animals like elephants and horses who carried the warriors in the battles were decorated beautifully. The women had huge choice dye fabrics, embroidery garments, enamel jewelery with precious and semi-precious stones, leather jootis. They mostly remained at home and decorated their inner walls with the paintings of animals and geometric designs.
During the rajput throne in the state the rulers were mostly engaged in the battles to establish their control on whole region. This influenced the condition of arts and crafts to great extent, whenever a new ruler came in to the power he demolished the arts of previous ruler and promoted the arts and crafts of his interests depicting the pictures of victory in wars with the previous ruler. On the other side as some rajput rulers had their alliances with the muslim rulers, the effect of their relation can also be seen art of that time.
Few of the famous pieces of arts and crafts in Rajasthan are mentioned below:
Jewelery: Rajsthan is bestowed in jewelery. The traditional form of jewellery were in form of rakhri, bajuband, bala, jhumka, gajra, gokhru etc. With the spread of education the educated women at present however avoid to wear heavy jewelery during work time and wear on special occasions or festivals, but still the tribal and rural women wear heavy and simple jewelery weighing almost upto 5kgs without any discomfort. The man also wear the jewelry made for them like earings, rings and chains.
Lac and Glass: Lac and glass is mostly used for making bangles. Lac bangles are decorative bangles mostly wear by women in rural areas. They are decorated with dark colours and attractive piece of glass work is done on them.
Stone: Rajasthan has huge basket of marble, sand stone and kota stone. Various religious sculptures and portraits of various famous persons are made by carving the stone.
The Other famous craft items include blue pottery, hand block printing, tie and dye, terracotta sculptures, paintings on camel hide, embroidery, cloth painting, carpets, durries, inlay work on brass and wood .