Then & Now

Indian handicrafts, encompassing myriad skills, techniques, materials and objects come to us from a glorious past. In times gone by they found patronage from kings and nobles as well as the common man and so flourished. They adorned and beautified. Even objects of daily use were aesthetically balanced. Today, craft is threatened. It is in competition with cheaper, more practical industrialized products. 'Handmade' has lost its status and no longer comes attached with the 'prestige' tag. In fact handicraft now has come to mean an impractical thing of the past for many. The globalised world we live in today has not helped matters. It has meant even greater competition.