The second Auroville Potters’ Market

Gora, an awakened Indian mystic, was a potter. When his disciples grew in numbers and included kings and nobles, they told him to stop his pottery work as it was not appropriate for a master. Gora’s answer to them is very significant: ``Even with you all, I am doing the same, tamping from the inside and tapping from outside, moulding you.’’ In fact, that’s the whole art of pottery and that’s also the whole art of creating oneself. There is nothing like pottery to make one centred within oneself.

So when the Auroville Potters’ Market took off, it was, for me, a regular visitor from Pune, the natural outcome of this spiritually-rich place. This centuries-old-connection between pottery and the inner journey seems to have got transmitted into the new generation as well. Ishan Lamba from Delhi, the youngest among the participants, summed it up for me, ``You cannot hurry the clay or the process. It goes on and on and you wait till it completes. And as you wait, you can experience becoming quiet, and the silence within grows.’’ This young man had experimented with different walks of life before the inner call took him to the much-coveted Golden Bridge Pottery Centre in Pondicherry. The four-day-long market, which began on 23rd January, is the brainchild of two ebullient Aurovilian women, Ange Peter and Sabrina, great potters themselves. The 2016 market is the second edition of the show that they had started last year. Under a vast canopy of trees, the market spread out, like a typical village fair. The sheer fun of creation that was visible in both the potters and their works on display infected the visitors and buyers as well. I myself went on a splurge because I knew I would not get any of these pieces anywhere else. Here, each piece was unique, individualistic and spoke volumes to me.

For example, Kavita Ganguly’s animal motif creations reflected joy and playfulness. There sat frogs in utter relaxation by the pool, legs in water….A perfect piece for your coffee table or for your study. Kavita hails from Anand in Gujarat. Ange Peter’s mugs for life, which featured flowers from her own garden and the woods around, had that call of the forest in them.

Every stall had something quite unexpected, which made the browsing and buying all the more thrilling. At Supriya Menon Meneghetti’s stall, everything centred around the underlying theme of shankh or conch. It was like standing by the sea. Yamini Dhall from Mumbai, the Economic Times journalist for whom pottery is a way of expressing herself, had brought some exquisite ware. Her works in blue porcelain with 22 carat gold etchings were a collector’s item. So were Priya Sundaravalli’s intricate designs with crystal rock effect. The secret, she told me, lay in getting the clay fired at a very high temperature. Kolkata-based Kabita Lindenmeyer’s main pieces were all hand-moulded, in varying shapes and in some rare, irresistible hues. Ranu Kawatra from Gurgaon, near New Delhi, liked to experiment with his medium, the result being some hitherto-unseen creations. One among them stood out: a stand in the shape of a hand, with struggling fingers. Amidst the glazed pottery, stone pottery and ceramic art, two stalls had a different look: with rust-red wares, the colour of the earth here in Auroville. They belonged to potters from nearby villages, like Pandurangan of Kottakkarai with his terracotta works. The children’s section, where children could experiment with clay, was always crowded with enthusiastic little artists. I stood watching them as they worked in total silence, engrossed in the moulding. But there was another place which drew travelling guests like me: the packing station, manned by two next gen Aurovilians, Kiran and Tara, who made it easy for us to carry the breakable items safely. The banner above the station was typically Aurovilian: “We run on love and donations! [Hugs Accepted]” And how could I leave without giving them hugs, besides donations, of course ?

The label of Teekshna Prasad’s pottery is ‘Clay Works’. It is a statement that applies to this market too. Clay does work. In both the inner and the outer worlds.

Rathi is a professional journalist from Chandigarh. She lives in Pune and is a regular visitor to Auroville.