By Porter Lang
Pick up a piece of Jaipur blue pottery and it feels lighter than you expect. That’s the first clue that something unusual is going on. This isn’t fired earth in the way most pottery is.
The body contains no clay. The “dough” is a mix of quartz stone powder, powdered glass, multani mitti (fuller’s earth), borax, gum and water. It is closer to faience, a frit-based material, than to anything thrown on a wheel from local soil. That composition is why finished pieces feel light, and it is part of why blue pottery is glazed and low-fired. Colour comes from cobalt oxide, which gives the signature blue. Firing is slow and careful: roughly four to five hours at an even temperature, since uneven heat cracks the pieces.
The craft’s roots lie in Persia and Central Asia, and one account has it arriving in India with the Turks in the 14th century. Accounts differ on when it reached Jaipur. Some say the 17th century, others the early 19th. Most accounts agree on the patron. Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II, who reigned from 1835 to 1880, sent local artisans to Delhi to learn the technique, and he opened an art school in Jaipur.
The craft later faded, and by most accounts it had nearly vanished by the 1950s. The painter and teacher Kripal Singh Shekhawat is credited with its revival and is often called the father of modern Jaipur blue pottery.
In Jaipur’s shops, work ranges from tourist-grade to serious studio pieces, and the difference isn’t obvious from ten feet away. Weight, evenness of the glaze and the crispness of a hand-painted motif’s edges say more than price alone.