Tradition · wood carving craft · India
Kondapalli toys
Also known as Kondapalli, Kondapalli Bommalu, Aarya Kshatriya
Figures carved rather than turned, from the light tella poniki wood of the Kondapalli hills near Vijayawada, joined with tamarind paste and painted — village scenes, bullock carts, the Dasavataram, and the dashavatara sets sold for the Sankranti bommala koluvu.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 16.620, 80.550
Worth knowing
The carvers are Aarya Kshatriya families who say they came from Rajasthan several centuries ago. Kondapalli and Channapatna are the two toy towns of the south and are constantly confused, though nothing about them is the same: one carves soft wood into figures, the other turns hardwood on a lathe and lacquers it.
Connections (2)
- AnalogueChannapatna lacquered toys
Kondapalli in Andhra and Channapatna in Karnataka are the two southern toy towns and they are opposites in method: Kondapalli carves soft tella poniki into figures and joins them with tamarind paste, Channapatna turns hardwood on a lathe and colours it with lacquer held against the spinning piece. Both hold geographical indications, both nearly died to plastic imports, and both are now sustained partly by design intervention and partly by nostalgia.
- Trade routeMachilipatnam / Masulipatnam / Bandar
The Kondapalli hills sit behind the Krishna delta and the old Coromandel port at Machilipatnam, and the toy-carving families belong to the same craft economy as the kalamkari printers at Pedana a short distance away — a coastal district that exported painted cotton to Persia and Southeast Asia and made carved wood for the inland festivals. Both trades ran on the same river-and-port geography and both contracted when the harbour silted.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Kondapalli Toys”. Geographical Indications Registry (Government of India) filings; Ministry of Textiles and Sangeet Natak Akademi craft documentation.
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