Goa’s new heritage craft

Miniature heritage windows

Dastkari Haat Samiti

Dastkari Haat Samiti

Window Modeling: Windows - Souvenirs (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

Miniature Windows of Goa

Many large ornamental windows with distinct designs can be used to identify the old houses of Goa. The Women@Work group have a handsome collection of miniature windows to offer visitors to the Museum of Goa in its little shop.

Window Modeling: Process (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

The Women@Work group who proudly display their newly acquired skill of recreating small models of Goa’s iconic shell windows.

Window Modeling: Windows - Souvenirs (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

The array of colourful model windows reflecting the styles of Goa evolved as a creative urge of Sharda Kelkar, who is the daughter of Dr Subhodh Kerkar, the founder of the Museum of Goa.

Window Modeling: Windows - Souvenirs (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

The resin window souvenirs are exact replicas of the original ones. The form an excellent decorative collection for an interior wall.

Window Modeling: Process (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

Shaping Miniature Windows

The Women@work group make a charming addition to the existing traditional crafts of Goa like terracotta, brass work, crochet, tile making and weaving. Their artistic windows transformed an innovative and indigenous building craft of the 16th and17th into a contemporary artifact that draws everyone’s attention to the beautiful old homes where such windows can still be seen.

Window Modeling: Windows - Souvenirs (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

The windows are made in two sizes using a fairly eclectic palette.

Window Modeling: Windows - Souvenirs (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

The handcrafted windows recall the real windows still visible in Goa’s old architecture.

Window Modeling: Windows - Souvenirs (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

The window with overhanging balconies on upper floors of a home, become favourite places from which elderly ladies watched the world go by. The windows are thus realistic and yet fantastical.

Window Modeling: Windows - Souvenirs (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

These colours can be reimagined to cause a sensation if made in actual window sizes and attached to an art deco home.

Window Modeling: Windows - Souvenirs (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

Small and larger sizes offer a price difference for visitors at the Museum of Goa store.

Window Modeling: Windows (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

Each little moulded window is painted very similar to but unlike any existing window in an actual home, making them quirky and fun.

Window Modeling: Windows (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

These small souvenirs draw tourists’ attention away from Goa’s beaches and offer them a nudge towards Goa’s heritage architecture.

Window Modeling: Windows (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

The creative windows kindle a sense of having seen them somewhere before.

Window Modeling: Windows (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

Minimal in the use of colour, the sober elegance of the colour palette of this window expresses the mood of the woman who painted it.

Window Modeling: Windows (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

The colours used for this window model recollects the vibrant mood of Goa’s popular street festivals.

Window Modeling: Windows (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

Terracotta is a common colour on surfaces of buildings, but here the artist brightens her work with a fluorescent green in the space for glass or shells.

Window Modeling: Windows (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

Wooden lattice work on window frames required skilled craftsmanship and carpenters of an earlier era.

Window Modeling: Windows (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

The depiction of a balcony below the window indicates the window is imagined on an upper floor of a home

Window Modeling: Windows - Souvenirs (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

To match the originals, the windows are painted in bright and vivid colours, recreating a sense of Indo Portuguese influence.

Crafts Maps of India - Goa (1993-2010) by Jimmy DevasiaDastkari Haat Samiti

Goa's Cultural Heritage Preserved in Maps

A plan is now afoot among designers, furniture makers, architects and social activists to revive the old art of window making. The framework and fixing systems are simple enough. There are now many modern industrial alternatives to shells that are equally attractive and translucent, which could be cut by hand into the disc-like shapes of the oyster nacre.

Window Modeling: Goan houses (2019)Dastkari Haat Samiti

If a vanished architectural style of Goa can give rise to small mementos, it is being imagined possible to go full circle and reconstruct those old Goan windows, painted in new creative ways, to make history yet again.

Crafts Maps of India - Goa - 2 (1993-2010) by Jimmy DevasiaDastkari Haat Samiti

The Dastkari Haat Samiti had done a series of maps to document the crafts of each state of India. The Goa map was published in 2004, at the time when model window making did not exist.

However, the artwork on the maps bring out balconies and windows, almost as a precursor to the new focus on old windows as an architectural craft.

Crafts Maps of India - Goa (1993-2010) by Jimmy DevasiaDastkari Haat Samiti

On the reverse side of the crafts map of Goa the Dastkari Haat Samiti used a series of clay tiles made in a small shop and tile making establishment found in 2004 in the Fountainhaas locality in Panaji.

Window Modeling: Oysters on the plate (2019) by Subodh KerkarDastkari Haat Samiti

Credits: Story

Text: Jaya Jailty
Photography: Chirodeep Chaudhuri
Artisans: Kavita Singh, Swarupa Kamli
Ground Facilitator: Ankit Kumar, Sharda
Documentary Video: Chirodeep Chaudhuri
Curation: Ruchira Verma

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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