With a sudden decision, last December 16, I came to visit my village home with my family. Basically the kids were keen on traveling because they have been living a monotonous life since the school was closed for so long. Although I grew up in a village, but in the case of my children, they were born and raised in Dhaka city and they are not familiar with many traditions in the village. One such subject is the pottery persistance. There are few potters' houses several kilometers away from my village. Although I visited these places many times in my childhood, this time my aim was to introduce my children to this art. So this morning we came to the potters' house to discover this art. During my visit I captured few pictures of pottery making process, will be sharing with you all throughout this writing.
Nowadays, due to the development of technology, these earthenware items are not very much in vogue now. As a child, I saw many people using earthenware. Now due to the easy availability of plastic items and melamine in the urban areas, the significance of pottery items is very low. So, the pottery industry is now almost dead.
I’ve been in this potter’s house for quite some time and was talking to an old person who used to make these earthenware. According to him, these pottery items are not sold very much anymore as people show less interest. Although some earthenware items are sold, they are not peddled at the expected price. So his children are now leaning towards another profession. He is speculating that maybe after his death there will be no one who would continue this pottery business here.
This class of people has very little idea about the scenario outside their boundary. Although people now rarely use pottery, but many people use these as showpieces which is very popular among the townspeople. So, if these guys pay more attention to making showpieces made of clay, then they will get a good price for them. I was trying to explain this to them on the way back. So, if they don't keep up the tempo with the continuous changing lifestyle now, maybe this beautiful art will be lost one day. Definitely, we don't want to see that.