TRADITIONAL ART KALAMKARI GETS PATRONAGE THROUGH TTD

Tirumala, 20 September 2017: Apart from its basic tenets of performing rituals in the temple of Lord Venkateswara as per Vaikhanasa Agama, providing darshan and other facilities to multitude of visiting pilgrims across the globe, the propagation of Hindu Sanatana Dharma and vedas, TTD has also taken up the noble task of preserving the unique traditional art “Kalamkari”.

ANCIENT ART GETS BOOST

Kalamkari is an ancient style of hand painting done on cotton or silk fabric with a tamarind pen, using natural dyes. The word Kalamkari is derived from a Persian word where ‘Kalam‘means pen and ‘Kari’ refers to craftsmanship. This art involves 23 tedious steps of dyeing, bleaching, hand painting, block printing, starching, cleaning and more. Motifs drawn in Kalamkari spans from flowers, peacock and paisleys to divine characters of Hindu epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana. However in the course of time, this unique art began to lose its identity. However, five years ago, TTD introduced this as one of the six courses offered by the Sri Venkateswara Institute of Traditional Sculpture and Architecture (SVITSA) and now became a star attraction.

TTD INTRODUCES THE COURSE IN 2012

Kalamkari course was introduced by TTD in 2012 and it is the brain child of the then Executive Officer Sri LV Subrahmanyam who felt the need to give a boost to this ancient Indian art-craft. It grabbed the attention of girls in no time. “After couple of years, girls joined in good numbers in this course. It still needs more publicity so that the students can join in this ancient art and sustain its glory”, says Sri Devadas, Principal of SVITSA.

COLOUR HAS NATURAL FRUIT AND FLOWER DYES

‘I am thankful to TTD for giving me the opportunity to fine tune my skills in kalamkari paintings on cloth. The colours used in this ancient art are extracts from natural plants. I developed passion towards this art from one of my friend’s relative who stays at Srikalahasti and is an expert in Kalamkari arts. Today it has become a trend setter in fashion fabric world with its unique art of mythological characters”, says Sripriya, one of the students at the Institute, near Alipiri.

SCHOLARSHIP TO STUDENTS

TTD provides free hostel, food, scholarships to the students, corpus of Rs.1lakh with interest for the students who pass out successfully as a token of encouragement for taking up a traditional course. So far three batches have passed out and 17 students received the certificates for this two year diploma course.