POTTERING ABOUT

A POTTERY STORY COMMEMORATES THE WORK OF MASTER POTTER IRA CHAUDHURI OVER SEVEN DECADES

- Soumitra Das

What does a pioneering master potter do after she stops throwing pots post-pandemic? For the past 3-4 years, Ira Chaudhuri, 96, has been making drawings—mostly decorative. She made 300 bookmarks when her book—A Pottery Story: The Work of Ira Chaudhuri—was launched last November at the India International Centre in New Delhi. The book traces her distinguished career and, parallelly, the development of Indian studio pottery in Ira’s own words and those of her colleague Trupti Patel, besides a conversation with artist Nilima Sheikh.

The gorgeous tome has lavish colour spreads that show Ira at work, and also gets up close with the simple and bold shapes she created in the entire range of shades from austere greys and creams to warm browns, dusky indigos, smouldering vermilions and vitreous turquoises. She often ornamented her pots in the sgraffito technique—fantastical hybrid forms echoing avian, animal and floral shapes and Santiniketan