Karnataka

Handicrafts

A small hamlet forty-six kilometers from Bangalore, on the Mysore Highway , called Chennapatna, famous for its lacquered toys is worth a visit.
You have probably played with a colorful top or a couple with their heads nodding or some other toy with bright hues. Tipu Sultan was fascinated by Karnataka and, being socially aware, he seems to have given these real sons of the soil a craft that was to become a household word. At the border of the village of Chennapatana is a forest that is a source of the wood. These Hale trees have cream colored wood that is easy to turn on a lathe. Bright colored lac is then applied to the toy, and you have a Chennapatna object in your hands. Cauvery, a government-run handicrafts showroom in Bangalore, with Ms. Baliga at the helm, has its own center here. It was exhilarating to see both the colorful objects and the housing complex. Unlike other centers of craft making, the crafts people here have been provided housing on a soft loan by Viswa of the Karnataka Government - a Dutch assisted programme, with 300 homes in the complex. The new designs are provided by the many export groups or the Regional Design Center. All in all, over 4000 families have lathes to spin these toys in their homes.