Studio Co-ordinator:- Anuj Daga, Milind Mahale, Rupali Gupte
Swamini Deobagkar
The settlement study aimed at translating bodily experiences of space into drawings. We studied and documented the medieval town of Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh, the perfume capital of India.
We were broadly documenting three sites to study the structure of the city and the everyday lived spaces in Kannauj.
The first site was the Mata Chemkali Mandir where the settlement grew as an agrarian village. The mandir had become a local institution that had tied together the lives of the people living around it as well the street and the school nearby that added to the landscape and experience of the place.
The second site was the Bada Bazaar which had multiple shops and house types forming the spine of the trading settlement. Located in the central part of Kannauj, the market sits over a gentle slope with clustered shops paired along the narrow street creating a complex neighbourhood. Along with this bazaar, we also studied the Shyam Sundar Bhawan located at the beginning of the spine and perfumeries belonging to Rajeev and DC Mehrotra along the spine of the Bada Bazaar.
The third site was Nadeem Faruqui’s Perfumery which has come up on erstwhile agricultural land, located slightly away from the main market. Here we studied the entire detailed process of perfume making and about its trade. Nadeem Faraqui hails from a family that has been in the perfume and attar making business for over two centuries and have grown their business from a single factory to multiple godowns and showrooms.
Throughout our time at the factory we studied in detail the process of making attar and spent time in their showrooms looking at different types attars and perfumes that they manufactured.Sarvesh unties the sack of flower petals and pours them into the deg. The ‘deg’ is a copper still into which the natural ingredients like petals, twigs and leaves are put along with water. Before covering the deg with its lid, he packs the rim using a clay mix to seal the vessel after closing the lid. These degs are placed in a bhatti (clay furnace) which is fired with wooden logs to heat the deg. The steam travels from the deg into the bhapka or the receiver through a bamboo pipe wrapped with twine. This receiver is also made with copper and acts as a condenser for the scented vapour. This bhapka is placed in a cooling chamber filled with water. Saleel stays on his toes throughout this process and fills each chamber with water and changes it every 4-5 hours. The vapour collected mixes with the base oil kept inside the receivers and the excess water is removed.
They repeat this procedure every day for 4-5 weeks after which the scented oil is collected and heated in a larger vessel called patila. The attar is the allowed to settle and is stored in camel-skin bottles called kuppis to remove moisture, leaving behind pure attar.
This process of studying the perfume/attar making helped us shape our documentation and understand the cultural significance of perfume making in the city. Overall our time in Kannauj helped us trace the historical development of the settlements in the city both spatially and culturally.
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