Silver filigree work, gilt, chased, and engraved, is produced in many parts of India and of Burma ; the koftgari work of iron and steel, inlaid or otherwise ornamented with gold, is chiefly an art of the Panjab, employed on shields, sword-hilts, necklaces, bracelets. In all these, fineness and elaboration, both in design and workmanship, are held in the highest esteem, and secondary qualities of this kind produce good results in small articles of luxury. It represents the earliest metallic traditions with which we are acquainted.
In the decorative manufactures of Kashmir, designs in outline and colours are prepared for their shawl manufacturers, and in several parts of India blocks are used for printing on calicoes and on the borders of silks.
The chidree is a form of printing in Bombay, which consists in tying up the design previous to dyeing the cloth.
Brass stencil plates are used for the decoration of floors during festivals. The workman produces these stamps without drawing any preliminary outline. In one hand he holds the punch and in the other the hammer, and punches the metal as it rests on a piece of flat board until the design is completed. In use, powdered marble is passed, by a gentle tap, through the perforated plate, and leaves a white dotted outline on the floor, the design being afterwards filled in with powders of various colours. The Dewali is the best time to see these kunna drawings, but they are also much used on other festivals and weddings.
The colours of the cotton and silk sarees in use amongst all the Hindu women of the south of I India show great skill in dyeing. The loongis of Sind have also attracted much praise. Bedcovers, called palempores (palang-posh), were at one time very largely exported from the east coast of the Peninsula, and are again making their way in the fashionable shops of London.
In their ivory carvings, lacquer work, and dyeing, China and Japan are in advance of all other races. The Chinese and Japanese excel in ceramic manufacture, which the caste rulespre vailing in India utterly debar the Hindus from attaining to anything beyond the cheapest un glazed earthenware, and Muhammadans of India have accepted this position. They are restricted to unglazed earthen pots for holding water, pots for cooking, pans for frying or baking.
The stone vessels of Carwar are made by turning on a lathe their indurated talc or taleose slates, sometimes light grey, sometimes darker ; it is an object of great curiosity. Representations of
mosques, goblets, etc., are cut from it, but it is also much prized for its intrinsic merits. Pickles, milk, and other substances likely to suffer in contact with copper vessels, or to be absorbed in common pottery, are kept by careful housekeepers in these pots.
Metal workers in gold, silver, copper, brass, tin, zinc, iron, and steel, and for all articles of jewellery and articles used in Hindu work, are very numerous, and weapons of all•kinds, daggers, swords, and matchlock barrels, are largely made. The larger articles being the abkhora or drinking cup, attardan or perfume box, gulab pash, rose water sprinkler, gulab den or rose-water holder, the hookah, the kummul or pedestal, the pandas or betel-leaf holder, the pullye or lustral spoon, and the various kinds of lamps. The ruder wares are the gella and chumboo, water-pots, the hookah bowl, and the chillum for the fire ; the handl, ghagar, or chatty for carrying water in ; the mudka, topee, and towlee, cooking pots ; the pnrrel, baking pot ; the taws, frying pan, and the thali dish.
The embroidery of Asia has been famed through ages, and still takes a high place. The chogha, made of the coarser wool of the goat and camel, is embroidered in Kashmir and the Panjab. The shawls of Kashmir and the Panjab are beauti fully embroidered.
Muslin is embroidered with silk and gold thread at Dacca, Patna, Dchli, and Madras. Sind and Cutch (Kachchh) have special embroideries of coloured silk and gold. Leather work is em broidered in Gujerat. At Gulbargah and Atirang abad, velvet (inakInal) is gorgeously embroidered with gold, to make canopies, umbrellas, and housings for elephants and horses, for use on state occasions. A chadar or shawl made by order of a late Gaekwar, was composed entirely of inwrought pearls and precious stones, disposed in an arabesque fashion, and was said to have cost a kror of rupees. Although the richest stones were worked in it, the effect was most harmonious. When spread out in the sun, it seemed suffused with an iridescent bloom, as grateful to the eye as were the exquisite forms of its arabesques.— Sir George Birdwood.