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Crafts Museum & the Train
I went to India and Nepal for the first time on a Buddhist pilgrimage led by Shantum Seth in 2007. The following is from my 2008 trip, about a year later.
After lunch, we visited the Crafts Museum; this was a great coincidence for me, because it was one of the places I meant to visit on my own, if only I hadn’t arrived in New Delhi twenty-four hours later than planned. The Crafts Museum could be called the Folk Art Museum. Outside, to the left of the building, we passed terra cotta figures, some life-size, some larger than life. I found them breathtaking. Some were probably deities and others creatures.
Inside the museum are many glass display cases full of sculptures, puppets, dolls, and textiles. The puppets are brightly painted and hand-carved wood; their costumes are also bright and colorful and flashy. I took pictures of them, but I was in such a hurry that most of the pictures are fuzzy. I had a similar experience with the numerous display cases full of antique sculptures, mostly Hindu deities. It’s a pity that I rushed through and took such poor pictures, because the puppets and sculptures were my favorite part of the museum and the most relevant to the sculptures I make from polymer clay.
Beyond the glass display cases, I entered a wing in which sections of an old aristocratic Rajasthani house had been reassembled. The walls were white…