Indian studio pottery movement
I work as a practising ceramic artist in New Delhi and Pondicherry. I began my research projects as self-initiated ones, because as a part time visiting faculty at the TVB School of Habitat Studies, IIT Design Centre, Bombay, and the MS University Baroda, I realised the lack of any scholarship in the area of ceramics by art historians. I wanated to teach about the Indian historical engagement with ceramics, seeing myself at the present end of a long line of makers.
Pioneers of the Indian pottery movement
In this visit I concentrated on the 19th century and used the National Art Library at the V&A and the British Library as well as studying museum and archival collections in Alton, Nottingham, Brighton, Swansea, Stoke-on-Trent, Osborne House etc. On both my two visits to the UK under the auspices of the NTICVA I had a simply charged time, absorbing everything, particularly the intense discussions with the Indian section at the V&A Museum as to how to present objects in a historical framework, and in the wider perspective of a post-colonial setting.
A complex history: collections of Indian art at the V&A
Of the grants awarded to me, the one that most deeply affected me , was the NTICVA Visiting Fellowship which I was awarded soon after completing my PhD when I was looking for a new area of study and had become interested in the field of new new museology. This deconstructive approach applies insights of the new anthropology to the field of museology, examining the ways in which museums have become influential institutions in the modern world, as custodians and interpreters of the artefacts of the past.
