BINDING STRAW

So, my second day in India is my first day of learning the techniques at Naba’s workshop. Debasrita and I share an Uber across town which collects her first and then picks me up from my guesthouse on AJC Bose Road. It costs around 300-400 rupees (approx. £4). We’re early because the traffic is good (unlike the day before where every journey was almost gridlocked) and so we have time to take the short walk to the Hooghly to see where the clay deliveries come in. The part of the river that the clay is extracted from is a little further away and it comes by boat. Though it’s almost 9 am, there is little activity.

On our arrival at the workshop I’m presented with two pre-made straw armatures by Buddhadeb, who is to be my teacher, of the form of goddess Annapurna seated cross legged and her partner Lord Shiva. I explain that it’s not the point of my time here to have these things done for me and that it’s important for me to try the processes myself to understand them.

The effort involved; the use of one hand to both bind and knot the string whilst also holding it in tension; the pain in your fingers from the repetitive tasks; the use of bare feet as a third arm for gripping: I wouldn’t really know any of this without having gone through the actions myself.

Buddhadeb is very concerned that I will be disappointed with my final figure if I choose to make the armature, with all of its imperfections and the lack of symmetry it will surely have if created by a novice. For me, these mistakes are actually loaded with potential. Perhaps it will even be possible to transform the idol into a piece of art, as well as being a tool of learning. I’m interested to see how exponentially a mistake grows when it starts at the core. 

Debasrita attempts to reassure him and whilst not completely convinced of my approach, he does concede, and I’m set up with a sheet of plastic on the floor and two loose piles of straw. One pile is of thicker more regular lengths of about a metre and the other of wispier bits. Helpfully, I now have the forms produced by Buddhadeb to follow.

The strings for binding are pre-cut to lengths of approximately two metres and hung by your side so you can reach them easily, quickly drawing a new string down to knot to the previous one without having to move more than an arm. To start a new string you either overwrap the new and the old and pull tight to secure, or knot, and in this way one continuous thread and flow is kept, rather than starting and stopping, per section. To bind the straw, the string is wrapped and then pulled tightly across the front and then away from you, backwards. With this action you seem to get a tighter bind and less chance of the thread breaking. When Buddhadeb demonstrates the techniques and then whilst working on his own pieces alongside me, there is a creak-like sound each time he makes this action because of the force involved. 

You start by creating each leg separately. The straw is gathered in small handfuls of lengths of 30/40 cm and, where bulk is needed, say for the thigh or calf definition, extra straw is folded over itself three, four or five times depending, into a ball or egg (as it is more oval than round). Once rolled it might be kept tight for say, a muscle joint, or fanned out if you are trying to add wider bulk, for example around the buttocks or chest area.

It is fine to let the straw run over length as you can cut this off later. The artisans are clean in their work, tidying off loose bits of straw as they go. They bend, or overbend, in the required place for the knee joint, elbow etc. and the way they go on to tie the string helps hold the position. (Locking this position is also aided once the form is complete by hammering in 50 mm nails, I go on to discover. This is the least sustainable material and approach so far and I’m left wondering about the environmental impact of all the nails rusting at the bottom of the Hooghly.)

The heel and foot are made with the overshooting hay divided in two. If required, some bulk from the centre of this bundle can be removed. The back section of the straw is folded back and then forward at the ankle to create the heel and then, with this fold kept, bound in with the rest, making the bridge and instep arch. My feet are far, far too long. I try to rectify this by undoing the string and taking some length away. Reflecting now, I should have just rolled with it and given her exceedingly large feet as this would have almost been better than a ‘little oversized’.

To make the second leg you copy the proportions of the first using your palm, hand and fingers as measures, as well as general feel for matching the bulk. No rulers or instruments are used, save for also taking measurements using the strings. I think, from what I picked up from the actions of Buddhadeb and the loose translations from Debasrita, they know the measurements by heart for each of the gods and goddesses at the three standard scales: three fingers for the neck, one forearm’s length for the thigh and so on.

Whilst the body shapes and proportions are no way near anatomical, I learn that they are extremely specific in their design. Extremely. I see a hand-made process like this and assume there is an element of artistic interpretation, a tolerance for variation, but it’s not like that. The idols are the way they are. There is a right and wrong. On a practical level, there is also the necessity to match the symmetry of the body and to be consistent across figures year-on-year. I learn the heads are casts in plaster moulds and that the consistency of having the predetermined scale for the head helps regulate the dimensions of the body as its built.

There is a sense or working in stages, completing sections of the body, then over-tying the thread and pulling it tight so the work is secure and you can release your hands to tidy up loose bits before moving on to the next section.

A mass of straw in a vertical position is bound to the stake on the plinth to start the body; the legs then tied to this. Additional straw is then added to bulk the trunk, left long and overshooting the bottom. This excess then gets split in two and bound to the thighs of each leg. This process of binding straw across different body sections, before introducing new straw, is essential to the technique and why the structure remains so tight and rigid.

A tight waist is needed on a goddess and then to bulk out the upper chest, four of the rolled ‘eggs’ of straw are fanned out and added, one on each side, with the front and back one being spread more than the others. Again, the overshooting straws of these bundles are gathered together and split in half to be bent over to begin each arm. Additional bulk is added across the top of this to broaden the shoulders and upper arm. This time, a large handful of new straw lengths is collected, held horizontally, then split in two. The two halves are pulled away from each other by half a length, thereby doubling the length of what you’re holding and gaining a double thickness in the centre compared to each end, replicating the thinning proportions of the arms from shoulder to wrist. To thicken the arm at the shoulder area further, additional folded mass is added on the underside of the arm, leading into the trunk.

Working on the armature for my Annapurna






Once the string is tied off at the end of the arms, the excess straw is meant to be cut off at an angle to enable sufficient surface area to build the palm of the hand onto later with clay. Not knowing this, and wrongly assuming that the hands come from casts, as the heads do (and as they do on the larger versions) I cut mine straight. Apparently, this is not a disaster and it can be fixed with some modelling later. I am concerned that without any internal structural support the hands will easily break off so hope that there is a solution for this.

Saturday 14th March 2020