By Ines Keane
Bidar has a fort, a pocket of soil and a black metal with silver set into it. The soil is the part people repeat.
Wikipedia places Bidar in Karnataka, on the Deccan plateau at an elevation of 710 metres, with a 2011 census population of 216,020. It says Ahmed Shah Wali Bahmani made Bidar his capital in 1427, shifting from Gulbarga, and that the city stayed under the Barid Shahi dynasty until the Bijapur Sultanate conquered it in 1619. It describes the fort as more than 500 years old, pentagonal, with five gateways, and the Mahmud Gawan Madrasa as a late fifteenth-century building that once held about 3,000 manuscripts before damage during Aurangzeb’s siege of 1656. We have not checked those figures against a heritage listing.
Where Bidriware starts
Wikipedia’s article on Bidriware says the craft is usually attributed to the Bahmani sultans, who ruled Bidar in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It says Abdullah bin Kaiser, an Iranian craftsman, was invited by Sultan Ahmed Shah Bahmani to decorate royal spaces and worked with local artisans. A history site gives the sultan’s reign as 1422 to 1436 and says a local goldsmith worked alongside the Iranian. It places the Bahmani era in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. Those centuries differ from Wikipedia’s. We have not seen a primary record of Abdullah bin Kaiser, so we are treating the account as tradition.
What it is made of
The sources give three different alloys. Wikipedia says white brass with copper to zinc at 1:16. A craft archive says 95 percent zinc and 5 percent copper, which is a ratio of about 19 to 1, though it also calls it 16:1. The history site says 90 percent zinc and 10 percent copper. These are all zinc-heavy and they do not agree. We are not choosing, and an alloy question belongs with a maker.
Silver is the inlay. The history site says silver, gold or copper can be inlaid.
The soil and the black
Wikipedia says artisans take soil from the fifteenth-century Bidar Fort, mix it with ammonium chloride and water into a paste, and rub it on the heated surface. It says the soil is rich in potassium nitrate, and that the paste darkens the base metal but leaves the silver alone. The craft archive says the soil has not seen rain or sunlight for centuries, and the history site calls it highly acidic soil available only within the fort. Those are three descriptions of one soil, and we have not seen a lab analysis of any of them. We are flagging that the exclusivity claim, that it exists only inside the fort, comes from craft writing and not a test.
The steps
Wikipedia lists eight stages: moulding, filing, designing with chisels, engraving, silver inlay, smoothing, buffing, and oxidation. The craft archive gives four larger stages: melting the alloy and casting, a temporary black coating from copper sulphate, engraving and hammering silver wire or sheet into grooves, and a final soil oxidation. The two lists describe the same craft at different levels of detail, and we are not reconciling them.
What it is made into, and how many remain
The archive lists lamp shades, wall plates, decanters, hookahs, boxes and vases, with animal and floral designs. The history site says that from the early eighteenth century artisans moved to Hyderabad, which became a major production centre under the Asaf Jahi rulers until the craft declined in the nineteenth century, and that only about 150 artisans remain in Bidar and 20 to 25 in Hyderabad. That count is undated and we have not checked it. Wikipedia lists Bidar and Hyderabad as primary centres and lists secondary ones in Purnia, Lucknow, Murshidabad and Aurangabad. It records Geographical Indication registration on 3 January 2006.
Visiting
We have not confirmed which workshops in Bidar welcome visitors, and we are not naming one. Ask at the local tourism office, and ask to be shown how a piece goes from casting to inlay.
What to ask
Ask what the alloy is. Ask whether the silver is wire or sheet and whether it is pure. Ask whether the piece was oxidised with fort soil, and where the maker got it. Ask who engraved it and who cast it. Ask how to clean it, since the sources say nothing about care and the finish is a chemical one.
We are not naming a workshop. We have not sourced one for this piece.
Roam first. Shop later.
Bidar makers can find out what’s involved at /sell-with-sephari/