AN INITIATIVE OF CRAFT REVIVAL TRUST.  Since 1999
Making Varaq

Art History/Craft History, Craft, Handloom, Art

Making Varaq: The Ancient Arts of the Precious Metal Leaf-Beaters

Sethi, Ritu

The glitter and glitz of precious metals has defined royalty, flaunted wealth and symbolized status and power. Over the millennia’salchemists innovated inventive ways to satisfy the ever-growing pursuit for the new, the unusual and the bespoke. Today some of these ancient techniques continue to find new uses to meet the demands of the connoisseurs, the well-heeled and the ‘new’ royalty. Among these techniques are the arts of the precious metal leaf-beaters. The micro-fine leaf that they hand-beat – the Varaq, is used in ways both sacred and secular that defy imagination and speak eloquently of the skills of craftsmanship and the abilities of craftspersons to adopt material to myriad usage. From gilding icons, deities, ritual and decorative objects of stone and wood to being applied onto wall murals and interiors. The applications on paintings extending from the detailed miniature arts on paper to the ritual textile arts like those of the painted Pichwais of Nathdwar in Rajasthan. Manuscripts illuminated with gold leaf, gold-tooled leather bookbinding and the edge-gilding of books to its use on religious book covers. Its extensive use in textiles from clothing to ceremonial and ritual flags and in the past on palanquin covers and tent hangings. An intrinsic part of the MateriaMedica of Ayurvedic and Yunanihealing systems, in ancient cosmetic recipes and of course the ubiquitous presence of this edible gold and silver Varaq on special-occasion Indian foods from confectioneries, desserts and nuts to the biryani. The skill and knowledge of making Varaq– the micro-fine ...

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