Cultural afternoon

The process begins as the wax is shaped under a hot light


A wax elephant


The clay moulds


Just out of the fire


Filed to perfection


A finished chess set


The grounds of the memorial are lush and clean


The memorial

On Friday the 1st of June, Chris, Melanie, David, Anna and I decided to take an afternoon trip out to Dhamrai. Located about 30km outside of Dhaka city, Dhamrai is a predominantly Hindu village which is home to the ancient art of brass statue making. We visited the workshop of a very nice man whose family has been trying to revive the art for the past 100 years. The task of making brass statues was originally purely for religious reasons; the task was to fill the temples with all the ornate and beautiful statues. Today, this still exists, but the workshops here also make the statues and other brass items for marketing purposes; although our host stressed that as each piece is unique and involves an immense amount of work, money is not their main objective.
We were given the grand tour of the workshop where we saw the whole process: this begins when they make the item out of bees wax, followed by a clay cover to form a hard mould around the item; then the item is filled with molten metal and placed in the kiln. Once it is fired the clay is broken and the metal item inside is filed and coloured according to need. A small statue takes about a month to make, but a larger item can take up to nine months. We finished a tour with a visit to the showroom where there was a beautiful chess set inside; I was tempted by so many beautiful things and had to keep reminding myself that I am leaving in 3 weeks.
On our way back to Dhaka we stopped at the National Martyrs' Memorial, which pays homage to the millions who died during the struggle for independence at the beginning of the 1970s. The area is a popular place with Bangladeshi tourists, and we had the usual crowd of starers surrounding us as we walked around.