Turning Marble into Expressions of Endearments
The calloused hands of Rafiquddin, award winning marble inlay artisan from Agra can not fathom the demand of consumerism as they struggle to scale up their business. It takes more than geometric allure of precious stones that shines in fine craftsmanship to bring the windfall in terms of order.
The persian art of Marble Inlay thrived chiefly in Agra and Udaipur during Mughal period and passed down from centuries, Rafiquddin a National Award winning Inlay artist runs the workshop in the city of Taj where he conjures up the ornamental pieces with religious devotion.
He is the son of Zardosi arisan, Shamsuddin who worked extensively to revive another ancient craft through 3D embroidery,invented by him in the year 1950. Even though his father has been an artist, Raisuddin, who is a lawyer by profession, is the one who carried this art forward by getting it patented.
Ever since the honour of ‘Shilp Guru’, India’s highest award for arts and crafts, in 2013 was bestowed on him, for his intricate marble inlay work, the EPCH has sponsored him to several International fairs for ‘demonstration’ purposes.
Rafiquddin has been projected as the poster boy of India’s craft heritage in many art and craft exhibitions. Many art magazines have inked their pages with his picture sitting cross-legged on the red-carpeted floor, his tools laid out in front of him: small slabs of marble, a polishing machine and a few marble boxes with intricately patterned motifs in coloured stone inside the plush and drafty exhibitions halls, far away from his home and workshop in Agra where he’s a stellar artist.
In Europe, customers attach intimate value to individual, high-grade products or products that look as if they have been hand-made but despite several policies directed towards promoting handicrafts and putting them into global exports by way of providing the craftspersons with direct access to the global market, the question remains if an individual artisan, even if he a national award winner, make it big at a global level?
It requires a trained artisan to bring in the highest level of precision in embedding the precious stones in sturdy slab of marble because it is like a technicolour jigsaw but artisan find hard to justify the demands of transactional and contemporary market.
