Thursday, August 21, 2008
This museum is in Delhi and was established in 1984. Objects of everyday life connected with the manners and customs, beliefs and practices of the urban and rural populations of India are displayed in the Sanskriti Museum of Everyday Art. There is a catalogue of the collections written by Jyotindra Jain in the library.
Researching Indian products through published material is invariably difficult because Indian products are not documented and written about much. So this is why what this batch of students is attempting is very important. I don't think any of them has realizes this yet! So other methods of collecting information need to be used. Ahmedabad is fortunate to have a museum of vessels (http://www.vechaar.com/metal_utensils.html) and a visit to this museum good could be a good start. The bulk of the information would really come from oral testimonies - from senior product designers, from the older generation, from professional cooks, owners of shops selling kitchen ware, hotel owners and the like. The internet would also throw up something, especially from websites of companies manufacturing kitchen equipment. Also old magazines which product advertisements - the NID library has bound volumes of the Illustrated Weekly of India for instance. Find out what the object you have chosen to study is called in different Indian languages and that might give a clue (for instances see if the word is Arabic, or Persian, or indigenous - that will give you something to follow up). See if the kind of food related to the object is eaten in other cultures - for instance roti, tortilla, pancake - check what implements are used in those cultures.
Record all the information along with all available visuals. MENTION SOURCES FROM WHERE INFORMATION WAS ACCESSED - For oral testimonies mention person, date and time of interview and place of interview. For websites - mention url and date it was accessed. For books - author, title, publisher, date of publishing and place of publishing. Make a start on this and see how it goes.