Khavda’s pottery is an art form of Khavda, North Kutch. While the men do all the throwing in terracotta, the women handle all the surface decoration which in this northern Kutch village of Ludia is primarily in the form of painting.
The potter gets mud from a specific acre (A lake) area near the village. It is called ‘Rann ka mitti’. This soft clay is shaped into a pot on a potter’s wheel and left to dry in shade, then Kumbhar women use red, black, and white clay-based paints to decorate each piece of pottery with distinct community-specific designs. After a while, it is cleaned and put in the sun to dry and then baked in a furnace, powered by simple and locally available fuels of dry wood and cow dung. The vessels are coated with a thin wash of geru (red color). The pots of Khavda get their red color from Geru, a type of soil (ocher/ umber), and the black and white dots and stripes are also made with natural material. Finished pieces lie aside, ready for drying. The terracotta pots of Khavda are distinct from the ones we may see elsewhere, because of their painting and form which is a result of repeated cleaning at every stage of the process of their making.
Traditionally, potters shared a very close relationship with different communities in the villages as the communities were totally dependent on the potters to supply the earthenware to not only run the kitchens but also to observe various rituals associated with festivals and related occasions of birth, marriage, and death.
The potters work very closely with their surrounding environment. Natural resources such as clay, water, leaves of a plant called ‘Jaru’ (local name), thorns, and tender stems of ‘Prosopis Julifera’, ‘white clay’, and black stone is required by the potters for activities related to the craft.
Clay is used to making pottery items, water is used to prepare the dough of the clay, leaves of ‘Jaru’, thorns and stems of ‘Prosopis Julifera’ are used to cover the kiln during firing the vessles, ‘white clay’ and ‘black stone’ are used for decorating the vessels. All these used to be available to the potters very easily and free of cost.
